OLD  TIME  AND  YOUNG  TOM 


OLD  TIME 
AND  YOUNG  TOM 


By 

ROBERT  J.  BURDETTE 

Author  of 

SMILES  YOKED  WITH  SIGHS 
CHIMES  FROM  A  JESTER'S  BELLS,  ETC. 


INDIANAPOLIS 

THE  BOBBS-MERRILL  COMPANY 
PUBLISHERS 


COPYRIGHT  1912 
THE  BOBBS-MERRILL  COMPANY 


BROOKLYN,    N. 


CONTENTS 

PACK 

I    THE  RISE  AND  FALL  OF  THE  MUSTACHE      .  1 

II    MY  KINDERGARTEN  OF  FIFTY  YEARS    .       .  87 

III  A  MINUTE  OF  TIME 125 

IV  FAVORITES 137 

V    "ROUNDED  WITH  A  SLEEP"     ....  154 

VI    A  DAY  IN  MOTLEY 170 

VII    TAKING  ACCOUNT  OF  STOCK    ....  187 
VIII    THE  RELIEF  OF  THE  SLAMRACK      .       .       .202 

IX    JUST  FOR  LUCK 217 

X    IN  THE  SLAVE  MARKET 234 

XI    WASTING  OTHER  PEOPLE'S  TIME  .       .       .  247 

XII    As  IT  Is  WRITTEN 260 

XIII  TALKING  WITH  THE  MOUTH  ....  276 

XIV  THE  SIX-FINGERED  MAN 295 

XV  THE  AVERAGE  MAN    .  308 


2041560 


FOREWORD 

When  I  was  young  I  wrote  it  "Preface'*,  because 
my  Teachers,  who  were  much  older  and  wiser  than  I, 
told  me  so  to  do.  Now  that  I  am  as  old  as  they  were, 
I  write  it  "Foreword",  because  my  new  Teachers, 
who  are  very  young  and  very  wise,  tell  me  I  must. 
I  do  not  care  how  I  write  it.  Because  I  know  full 
well  that  by  and  by  other  and  newer  Teachers,  much 
younger  and  far  wiser  than  any  I  have  had  heretofore, 
will  instruct  my  sons,  and  after  them,  yet  more 
Teachers,  youngest  and  wisest  of  all,  will  compel  my 
grandsons  to  spell  the  same  thing  yet  differently. 
What  is  it  to  me,  then,  how  the  word  is  written  ? 
I  write  this  page  only  because,  ere  the  pen  lays  me 
aside,  I  want  to  set  down  the  lecture  wherewith,  by 
the  lullaby  of  the  spoken  voice,  I  have  soothed  the 
children  of  Adam  to  sleep  for  lo,  these  thirty-five 
years  past,  but  which  I  have  not  set  to  the  notation 
of  the  written  page  since  first  I  wrote  it  in  the  joy 
of  my  heedless  youth,  a  long  generation  ago. 

"The  Rise  and  Fall  of  the  Mustache"  is  the  oldest 
lecture  in  the  world,  so  far  as  I  know.  It  is  also  one 
of  the  longest.  And  I  would  add  that  it  is  the  worst, 
but  for  the  fact  that  I  have  written  others  since.  It 
is  so  old  that  I  came  too  late  to  write  it  myself.  I  had 
it  from  my  father,  who  had  it  from  his  father,  who 


had  it  from  his  father,  and  so  on  back  to  the  time  of 
the  locust  who  carried  away  the  first  grain  of  corn. 

In  this  discourse  I  have  merely  set  down  in  dis- 
order what  people  told  me,  and  what  they  kept  back 
from  me;  what  they  confessed  with  boasting,  and 
what  they  denied  with  shame ;  what  I  saw,  and  what 
I  thought  I  saw;  what  I  knew  and  what  I  guessed, 
and  what  I  deliberately  imagined.  Then,  when  I 
read  what  I  had  recorded,  I  saw  that  I  had  told  the 
story  of  a  man's  life,  which  is  so  like  any  other 
man's,  that  the  biography  of  an  average  man  is  also 
called  the  history  of  "his  times".  Yet,  when  I  wrote 
this  narrative  I  gave  it  a  title,  because  I  firmly  be- 
lieved I  had  written  a  comic  parody  on  human  life. 
I  was  not  old  enough  to  know  that  a  burlesque  proves 
the  fact  it  caricatures. 

I  have  said  this  lecture  more  than  five  thousand 
times.  And  now,  on  the  printed  page,  I  sadly  miss 
the  singsong  soothing  of  the  utterance.  For  stories 
are  not  written  to  read,  they  are  told  to  hear,  as 
children  love  to  listen  to  them  before  their  intelli- 
gence is  spoiled  by  learning  to  read. 

What,  therefore,  the  laughing,  gray-haired  chil- 
dren of  my  audiences  heard  as  "The  Rise  and  Fall 
of  the  Mustache"  their  more  decorous  grandchildren 
may  read  as  "Old  Time  and  Young  Tom". 

ROBERT  J.  BURDETTE 


OLD  TIME  AND  YOUNG  TOM 


Old 
Time  and  Young  Tom 

THE  RISE  AND  FALL  OF 
THE  MUSTACHE 

ONCE  upon  a  time — last  night,  last  week,  a 
month  ago,  a  year,  five,  ten  years  ago — some- 
thing like  that,  I  had  a  dream  that  I  remember  to 
this  day,  and  that  in  itself  is  remarkable,  for  few 
dreams  are  made  of  stuff  that  endures.  The  dream 
you  had  last  night  you  told  this  morning  at  the 
breakfast  table  very  well,  and  everybody  recognized 
it  as  a  dream,  because  of  its  vivid  unreality;  but 
when  you  told  it  at  noon  it  began  to  frazzle  out  at 
the  edges;  and  when  you  told  it  this  evening  at  the 
dinner  table  you  made  it  up  as  you  went  along, 
every  word  of  it,  and  everybody  knew  it,  because 
it  didn't  sound  anything  like  a  dream. 
I 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

But  I  think  that  to  every  man  and  woman  God 
sends  pne  dream  in  a  lifetime  that  lasts  so  long  as 
life  lasts — one  Bethel  vision  of  loneliness  and  loving 
sympathy.  I  dreamed  I  was  a  boy  again.  Not  a 
great,  big,  rollicking,  football  boy,  trying  to  learn 
the  new  rules  to  play  them  in  the  old  way,  but  a  wee 
tiny  boy;  so  little  I  couldn't  sleep  alone.  So  I  was 
sleeping  back  in  the  dear  old  place,  with  my  head 
pillowed  pn  my  mother's  shoulder,  that  "blessed  hol- 
low of  the  shoulder"  that  Celia  Thaxter  said  God 
made  for  some  tired  human  head  to  rest  in.  I  was 
so  happy  sleeping  there  that  I  woke  up  with  an  excess 
of  comfort.  I  reached  out  my  hand  for  her  with  a 
child's  caress,  and  she  wasn't  there.  Then  I  reached 
over  on  the  other  side,  and  she  wasn't  there.  Then 
I  sat  bolt  upright  in  the  bed.  There  I  was,  half 
awake,  half  a  hundred  years  old,  all  alone,  in  the 
dark,  and  my  mother  was  gone !  So  homesick  I  was 
for  her,  I  wanted  to  cry. 

And  then  I  laughed  aloud  to  think  how  funny  it 
would  sound  to  hear  an  old  man  crying  in  the  night, 
like  a  baby  who  wanted  a  drink.  I  put  my  head  back 
on  the  pillow,  and  I  wished — oh,  how  earnestly  I 

2 


THE  RISE  AND  FALL  OF  THE  MUSTACHE 

wished! — that  I  was  back  in  the  dear  old  place, 
where  I  had  been  safe,  safe,  safe  as  I  had  never  been 
since  I  left  it.  For  half  a  minute  I  foolishly  wished 
I  was  a  boy  again.  But  when  I  arose  in  the  morn- 
ing, when  I  settled  down  to  my  work,  and  felt  the 
highest  and  noblest  joy  that  comes  into  the  soul  of 
man  or  woman — the  delight  of  having  work  to  do 
and  the  happiness  of  doing  it — I  was  so  glad  I 
wasn't  a  boy,  and  gladder  still  that  never  again  in 
this  life  or  in  any  other  would  I  be  a  boy. 

But  sometimes  a  man  says,  "Oh,  I  don't  know 
about  that.  I  would  like  to  be  a  boy  again." 
"Why?"  "Oh,"  he  says,  "a  boy  has  such  an  easy 
time — no  trouble — no  care — no  responsibility." 
Yes,  I  know,  children  have  no  troubles — only  they 
have.  They  have  more  troubles  than  grown-up  peo- 
ple. I  do  sympathize  with  grown-up  people  in 
trouble,  but  not  enough  to  hurt  me  or  do  them  much 
good.  If  a  man  got  into  a  thousand  troubles  I 
would  break  my  heart  over  him.  But  he  doesn't. 
He  gets  into  the  same  trouble  a  thousand  times. 
That  is  different.  I  get  tired  of  it  after  I  have 
pulled  him  out  pf  the  same  old  hole,  by  his  long 
3 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG  TOM 

silken  ears,  on  the  Sabbath  day,  about  five  hundred 
times.  If  he  was  anything  but  a  man,  by  that  time 
he  would  have  sense  enough  to  go  around  the  hole 
or  stay  on  his  own  side  of  it. 

But  a  boy's  troubles  are  all  new,  as  he  gets  into 
one  and  another  and  another  until  he  has  gone  the 
whole  round  of  experimental  experiences.  He 
thought  when  he  landed  on  this  planet,  it  was  a 
good,  sweet,  tender-hearted  world,  with  a  light  ca- 
ressing hand.  Little  by  little  he  learns  there  is 
cruelty,  injustice,  meanness  and  treachery  written 
on  the  calendar,  even  between  the  lines  of  love  and 
truth.  He  can't  understand  this.  It  hurts  him.  He 
gets  used  to  trouble  by  and  by,  as  grown-up  people 
do.  Just  as  the  soldier  under  the  old  system  of  mili- 
tary discipline  would  stand  with  his  wrists  leashed 
to  the  stake  and  his  back  bared  for  the  punishment. 

The  sergeant  standing  at  his  side,  counted  with 
cruel  deliberation  the  descending  blows  of  the  lash. 
When  he  got  as  far  as  "twenty — twenty-one — twen- 
ty-two— "  that  didn't  hurt  so  much.  By  that  time  the 
soldier  had  caught  the  rhythm  of  the  lash.  He 
knew  the  blow  was  coming;  he  braced  his  shoulders 
4 


THE  RISE  AND  FALL  OF  THE  MUSTACHE 

and  waited  for  it.  His  pride  nerved  him.  His  pur- 
pose of  revenge  burned  in  his  soul  like  a  smoulder- 
ing volcano.  You  might  whip  the  life  out  of  him 
after  that,  and  you  could  not  wring  a  moan  from 
his  set  teeth.  But  when  the  first  blow  uncoiled  it- 
self like  a  hissing  serpent  on  the  surprised  and  quiv- 
ering shoulders — that  startled  the  scream  from  him. 
That  hurt.  It  had  the  whole  back  to  hit  on,  and  it 
hit  in  an  unexpected  place.  It  is  the  new  trouble 
that  hurts. 

Think,  then,  what  must  have  been  the  experience 
of  the  first  family  in  the  human  race,  when  all  the 
troubles  in  the  world  were  not  only  new,  but  had 
to  be  invented.  Adam  and  Eve  are  the  only  people 
in  history  who  started  out  in  life  under  the  terrible 
handicap  of  being  born  full-grown.  They  had 
scarcely  got  their  farm — the  only  one  on  earth — 
reduced  to  a  kind  of  weed-producing,  weather-fight- 
ing, grange-like  order  of  things,  with  nothing  to 
disturb  the  quiet,  happy,  care-free,  independent  life 
of  the  jocund  farmer,  except  maybe  a  little  rust  in 
the  oats;  blight  in  the  wheat;  army-worm  in  the 
corn;  Colorado  beetles  foraging  the  potato  patch; 
5 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

cutworms  laying  waste  the  cucumbers;  curculio  in 
the  plums  and  borers  perforating  the  apple-trees ;  a 
new  kind  of  insect  they  couldn't  guess  the  name  of 
desolating  the  pastures ;  dry  weather  burning  up  the 
barley;  wet  weather  rotting  the  corn;  too  cold  for 
the  melons  and  too  hot  for  the  strawberries;  chick- 
ens dying  with  the  pip;  hogs  being  gathered  to 
their  fathers  with  the  cholera;  sheep  fading  away 
with  a  complication  of  things  no  man  could  remem- 
ber ;  horses  getting  along  as  well  as  could  be  expect- 
ed, with  a  little  spavin,  ring-bone,  wolf-teeth,  dis- 
temper, heaves,  blind  staggers,  collar-chafes,  saddle- 
galls,  colic  now  and  then,  foundering  occasionally, 
epizootic  when  there  was  nothing  else ;  cattle  going 
wild  with  the  horn  ail ;  moth  in  the  beehives ;  snakes 
in  the  milk-house;  moles  in  the  kitchen  garden — 
Adam  had  just  about  got  through  breaking  wild 
land  with  a  crooked  stick,  and  settled  down  comfort- 
ably, when  the  sound  of  the  Boy  was  heard  in  the 
land. 

Did  it  ever  occur  to  you  that  Adam  was  probably 
the  most  troubled  and  worried  man  that  ever  lived  ? 

I  have  often  pictured  him  as  a  careworn-looking 
6 


THE  RISE  AND  FALL  OF  THE  MUSTACHE 

man ;  a  puzzled-looking  farmer  who  would  sigh  fifty 
times  a  day,  and  run  his  irresolute  fingers  through 
his  hair  while  he  wondered  what  under  the  canopy 
he  was  going  to  do  with  those  boys,  and  whatever 
was  going  to  become  of  them.  For  you  see  they 
were  the  first  and  only  boys  on  earth.  There  were 
no  other  parents  in  the  neighborhood  with  whom 
Adam,  in  his  moments  of  perplexity,  could  consult. 
There  wasn't  a  boy  in  the  country  with  whom 
Adam's  boys  could  play  and  fight.  And  Adam  had 
never  been  a  boy  himself ;  what  could  he  know  about 
boy  nature  or  boy  troubles  and  pleasures  ? 

Imagine,  if  you  can,  the  celerity  with  which  he 
kicked  off  the  leaves,  and  paced  up  and  down  in  the 
moonlight  the  first  time  little  Cain  made  the  welkin 
ring  when  he  had  the  colic.  How  could  Adam  know 
what  ailed  him?  He  couldn't  tell  Eve  that  she  had 
been  sticking  the  baby  full  of  pins.  He  didn't  even 
know  enough  to  turn  the  vociferous  infant  over  on 
his  face  and  jolt  him  into  serenity.  If  the  fence 
corners  on  his  farm  had  been  overgrown  with  cat- 
nip, never  an  idea  had  Adam  what  to  do  with  it. 
It  is  probable  that  after  he  got  down  on  his  knees 
7 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

and  felt  for  thorns  or  snakes  or  rats  in  the  bed,  and 
thoroughly  examined  young  Cain  for  bites  or 
scratches,  he  passed  him  over  to  Eve  with  the  usual 
remark : 

"There,  tak'e  your  baby"  (accent  heavy  on 
"your"J,  "and  hush  him  up,  for  heaven's  sake,"  and 
then  went  off  and  sat  down  under  a  distant  tree  with 
his  fingers  in  his  ears,  and  perplexity  in  his  brain, 
while  young  Cain  split  the  night  with  the  most 
hideous  howls  the  empty  little  world  had  ever  lis- 
tened to.  It  must  have  stirred  the  animals  up  to  a 
degree  unto  which  no  menagerie  has  ever  since  at- 
tained. No  sleep  in  the  vicinity  of  Eden  that  night 
for  baby,  beasts  or  Adam.  It  Is  more  than  probable 
that  the  weeds  got  a  long  start  of  Adam  the  next 
day,  while  he  lay  around  in  shady  places  and  slept 
in  troubled  dozes,  disturbed,  perhaps,  by  awful 
visions  of  possible  twins  and  more  colic. 

And  when  the  other  boy  came  along,  and  the  boys 
got  old  enough  to  sleep  in  a  bed  by  themselves,  they 
had  no  pillows  to  fight  with.  What  comfort  could 
two  boys  get  out  of  pelting  each  other  with  frag- 
ments of  moss  or  bundles  of  brush?  What  dismal 
8 


THE  RISE  AND  FALL  OF  THE  MUSTACHE 

views  of  future  humanity  Adam  must  have  received 
from  the  glimpses  of  original  sin  which  began  to 
develop  itself  in  his  boys.  How  he  must  have  won- 
dered what  put  into  their  heads  the  thousand  and 
one  questions  with  which  they  plied  their  parents 
day  after  day.  I  wonder  what  he  thought  when 
they  first  began  to  string  buckeyes  on  the  cat's  tail. 
And  when  night  came  there  was  no  "hired  girl"  or 
black  "mammy"  to  keep  the  boys  quiet  by  telling 
them  ghost  stories.  Adam  didn't  know  so  much  as 
an  anecdote. 

Cain's  education  depended  on  his  inexperienced 
parents,  who  had  never  seen  a  boy  until  they  met 
Cain.  There  wasn't  an  educational  help  in  the  mar- 
ket. There  wasn't  an  alphabet  block  in  the  county. 
There  were  no  other  boys  in  the  republic  to  teach! 
young  Cain  to  lie,  and  swear,  and  smoke,  and  drink, 
fight  and  steal,  and  thus  develop  the  boy's  dormant 
statesmanship,  and  prepare  him  for  the  political 
duties  of  his  maturer  years.  There  wasn't  a  pocket- 
knife  in  the  universe  that  he  could  borrow — and 
lose.  When  he  wanted  to  cut  his  finger,  as  all  boys 
must  do  now  and  then,  he  had  to  cut  it  with  a  clam 
9 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

shell.  There  were  no  country  relations  upon  whom 
little  Cain  could  be  inflicted  for  two  or  three  weeks 
at  a  time,  when  his  wearied  parents  wanted  a  little 
rest.  There  was  nothing  for  him  to  play  with. 
Adam  couldn't  show  him  how  to  make  a  kite.  He 
had  a  much  better  idea  of  angels'  wings  than  he  had 
of  a  kite.  If  little  Cain  had  even  asked  for  such  a 
simple  bit  of  mechanism  as  a  "shinny-club" — some- 
times vulgarly  called  a  "hockey-stick" — Adam 
would  have  gone  out  into  the  depths  of  the  primeval 
forest  and  wept  in  helpless  confessed  ignorance. 

Small  wonder  that  Cain  turned  out  "bad".  I  al- 
ways thought  he  would.  For  his  entire  education 
depended  on  a  most  ignorant  man,  a  man  in  the 
very  palmiest  days  of  his  ignorance,  who  couldn't 
have  known  less  if  he  had  tried  all  his  life  on  a  high 
salary  and  had  a  man  to  help  him.  And  the  boy's 
education  had  to  be  conducted  entirely  upon  the 
catechetical  system;  only,  in  this  instance,  the  pupil 
asked  the  questions,  and  his  parent  teachers — heaven 
help  them — had  to  answer  at  them. 

For  they  could  not  take  refuge  from  the  steady 
stream  of  questions  that  poured  in  upon  them  day 
10 


THE  RISE  AND  FALL  OF  THE  MUSTACHE 

after  day,  by  interpolating  a  fairy  story,  as  you  do 
when  your  boy  asks  you  questions  about  something 
of  which  you  never  heard.  For  how  could  Adam 
begin,  "Once  upon  a  time",  when  with  one  incisive 
question  Cain  could  pin  him  right  back  against  the 
dead  wall  of  creation,  and  make  him  either  specify 
what  time,  or  acknowledge  the  fraud  ?  How  could 
Eve  tell  him  about  Jack  and  the  Bean-Stalk,  when 
Cain,  fairly  crazy  for  some  one  to  play  with,  knew 
perfectly  well  there  was  not,  and  never  had  been,  an- 
other boy  on  the  plantation?  And  as  day  by  day 
Cain  brought  home  things  in  his  hands  about  which 
to  ask  questions  that  no  mortal  could  answer,  how 
grateful  his  bewildered  parents  must  have  been  that 
he  had  no  pockets  in  which  to  transport  his  collec- 
tions. For  many  generations  came  into  the  fair 
young  world,  got  into  no  end  of  trouble,  and  died 
out  of  it,  before  a  boy's  pocket  solved  the  problem 
how  to  make  the  things  contained  seven  times  great- 
er than  the  container. 

The  only  thing  that  saved  Adam  and  Eve  from 
interrogational  insanity  was  the  paucity  of  the  lan- 
guage.    If   little    Cain    had    possessed    the    verbal 
ii 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG  TOM 

abundance  of  the  language  in  which  men  to-day  are 
talked  to  death,  his  father's  bald  head  would  have 
gone  down  in  shining  flight  to  the  ends  of  the  earth 
to  escape  him,  leaving  Eve  to  look  after  the  stock, 
save  the  crop,  and  raise  her  boy  as  best  she  .could. 

Which  wpuld  have  been,  six  thousand  years  ago,  as 
to-day,  just  like  a  man. 

Because  it  was  no  off-hand,  absent-minded  work 
answering  questions  about  things  in  those  spacious 
old  days,  when  there  was  crowds  of  room,  and 
everything  grew  by  the  acre.  When  a  placid  but  ex- 
ceedingly unanimous-looking  animal  went  rolling  by, 
producing  the  general  effect  of  an  eclipse,  and  Cain 
would  shout : 

"Oh,  lookee,  lookee,  pa!  what's  that?" 

Then  the  patient  Adam,  trying  to  saw  enough 
kitchen  wood  with  a  piece  of  flint  to  last  over  Sun- 
day, would  have  to  pause  and  gather  up  words 
enough  to  say : 

"That,  my  son  ?  That'  is  only  a  mastodon  gigan- 
teus;  he  has  a  bad  look,  but  a  placid  temper." 

And  presently : 

"Oh,  pa !  pa !    What's  that  over  yon  ?" 
12 


THE  RISE  AND  FALL  OF  THE  MUSTACHE 

"Oh,  bother,"  Adam  would  reply;  "it's  only  a 
paleotherium,  mammalia  pachydermata." 

"Oh,  yes ;  theliocomeaf terus.  Oh !  lookee,  lookee 
at  this  'tin !" 

"Where,  Cainny?  Oh,  that  in  the  mud?  That's 
only  an  acephala  lamelli  branchiata.  It  won't  bite 
you,  but  you  mustn't  eat  it.  It's  poison  as  politics." 

"Wheel    See  there!  see,  see,  see!    What's  him?" 

"Oh,  that?  Looks  like  a  plesiosaurus ;  keep  out 
of  his  way;  he  has  a  jaw  like — "  And  just  in  time 
Adam  remembered  that  he  had  no  mother-in-law. 

"Oh,  yes ;  a  plenosserus.  And  what's  that  fellow, 
poppy?" 

"That's  a  silurus  malapterurus.  Don't  you  go  near 
him;  he  has  the  disposition  of  a  Georgia  mule." 

"Oh,  yes;  a  slapterus.  And  what's  this  little 
one?" 

"Oh,  it's  nothing  but  an  aristolochioid.  Where 
did  you  get  it  ?  There,  now,  quit  throwing  stones  at 
that  acanthopterygian ;  do  you  want  to  get  yourself 
kicked?  And  keep  away  from  the  nothodenatri- 
chomanoides.  My  stars,  Eve !  where  did  he  get  that 
anonaceae-hydrocharideo-nymphaeoid?  Do  you  never 
13 


OLD   TIME   AND    YOUNG   TOM 

look  after  him  at  all?  Here,  you,  Cain,  get  right 
away  down  from  there,  and  chase  that  megalosau- 
rius  out  of  the  melon  patch,  or  I'll  set  the  mono- 
pleuro  branchian  on  you." 

Just  think  of  it,  Christian  man  with  a  family 
to  support,  with  last  year's  stock  on  your  shelves, 
and  a  draft  as  long  as  a  clothes-line  to  pay  to- 
morrow !  Think  of  it,  woman,  with  all  a  woman's 
love  and  constancy,  and  a  mother's  sympathetic  na- 
ture, with  three  meals  a  day  three  hundred  and 
sixty-five  times  a  year  to  think  of,  and  the  flies  to 
chase  out  of  the  sitting-room;  think,  if  your  cherub 
boy  was  the  only  boy  in  the  wide,  wide  world,  and 
all  his  questions  which  now  radiate  in  a  thousand 
directions  among  other  boys,  who  help  him  to  cut 
his  eye-teeth,  were  focused  upon  you ! 

Well,  you  have  no  time  to  pity  Adam.  You  have 
your  own  boy  to  look  after.  Or,  your  neighbor  has 
a  boy,  whom  you  can  look  after  much  more  closely 
than  his  mother  does,  and  much  more  to  your  own 
satisfaction  than  to  the  boy's  comfort 

Your  boy  is,  as  Adam's  boy  was,  an  animal  that 
asks  questions.  If  there  were  any  truth  in  the  old 
14 


THE  RISE  AND  FALL  OF  THE  MUSTACHE 

theory  of  the  transmigration  of  souls,  when  a  boy 
died  he  would  pass  into  an  interrogation-point.  And 
he'd  stay  there.  He'd  never  get  out  of  it;  for  he 
never  gets  through  asking  questions.  The  older  he 
grows  the  more  he  asks,  and  the  more  perplexing 
his  questions  are,  and  the  more  unreasonable  he  is 
about  wanting  them  answered  to  suit  himself.  Why, 
the  oldest  boy  I  ever  knew — he  was  fifty-seven  years 
old,  and  I  went  to  school  to  him — could  and  did  ask 
the  longest,  hardest,  crookedest  questions,  that  no 
fellow  who  used  to  trade  off  all  his  books  for  a  pair 
of  skates  could  answer.  And  when  his  questions 
were  not  answered  to  suit  him,  it  was  his  custom — a 
custom  more  honored  in  the  breeches  than  in  the  ob- 
servance— to  take  up  a  long,  slender,  but  exceed- 
ingly tenacious  rod,  which  lay  ever  near  the  big 
dictionary,  and  smite  with  it  the  boy  whose  natural- 
ly-derived, Adamic  ignorance  was  made  manifest. 

Ah,  me,  if  the  boy  could  only  do  as  he  is  done  by, 
and  ferule  the  man  or  the  woman  who  fails  to  reply 
to  his  inquiries,  as  he  is  himself  corrected  for  sim- 
ilar shortcomings,  what  a  valley  of  tears,  what  a 
howling  wilderness  he  could  make  of  this  world. 
15 


OLD   TIME  AND   YOUNG   TOM 

Your  boy,  asking  to-day  pretty  much  the  same 
questions,  with  heaven  knows  how  many  additional 
ones,  that  Adam's  boy  did,  is  told,  every  time  that 
he  asks  one  that  you  don't  know  anything  about, 
just  as  Adam  told  Cain  fifty  times  a  day,  that  he 
will  know  all  about  it  when  he  is  a  man.  And  so 
from  the  days  of  Cain  down  to  the  present  genera- 
tion of  boys,  the  boy  ever  looks  forward  to  the  time 
when  he  will  be  a  man  and  know  everything. 

His  questions  multiply  when  he  begins  learning 
the  English  language,  which  he  never  does  learn,  be- 
cause it  changes  faster  than  any  boy  can  grow,  and 
no  matter  how  he  spells  it  some  dictionary  contra- 
dicts him.  But  always,  to  the  boy,  any  language  is 
merely  a  medium  of  communicating  questions.  He 
asks  questions  that  no  grown  person  would  think  of, 
and  a  score  of  "grown-ups"  could  not  answer.  We 
grow  so  weary  of  his  interrogations  at  times  that 
we  say,  "He  asks  such  foolish  questions."  But  no 
boy  asks  foolish  questions.  He  asks  questions  we 
can  not  answer — that  is  what  makes  us  tired.  There 
is  an  old  proverb,  "Any  fool  can  ask  questions,  but 
it  takes  a  wise  man  to  answer  them."  But  a  fool 
16 


THE  RISE  AND  FALL  OF  THE  MUSTACHE 

can  not  ask  questions  without  at  once  exposing  his 
folly  and  ignorance.  One  of  the  best  and  wisest 
school-teachers  I  ever  suffered  under  used  to  mark 
the  boys  in  class,  not  on  their  recitations,  but  on  the 
questions  they  asked  about  the  lesson. 
|  There  is  no  way  in  which  a  man  exposes  his 
ignorance  so  completely  and  thoroughly  as  by,  "but- 
ting into"  a  conversation  and  asking  questions  about 
the  subject  under  discussion.  His  first  question  may 
betray  his  ignorance.  Go  to  the  court-house  some 
day — go  there  before  you  have  to;  you  will  enjoy 
the  illustration  better.  Here  is  a  man  on  the  witness- 
stand  who  tells  a  story  apparently  as  straight  as  a 
rule — a  clean-cut  statement  of  facts.  His  testimony 
is  so  strong  that  we  say,  "Well,  that  settles  the  ques- 
tion for  the  prosecution;  there  is  no  use  calling 
another  witness."  Then  a  lawyer  on  the  other  side 
takes  the  man  in  hand.  Now,  mind  you,  he  does  not 
contradict  a  word  the  man  says ;  he  simply  asks  him 
a  few  innocent-sounding  questions,  and  the  wit- 
ness's beautiful  story  falls  into  a  hundred  fragments. 
Now,  who  was  the  fool,  the  man  asking  the  ques- 
tions, or  the  fellow  in  the  witness-box,  sweating 
17 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

himself  to  'death  trying  to  remember  how  he  an- 
swered that  same  question  the  other  time?  Why,  it 
took  that  lawyer  years  of  study  of  books,  and  years 
of  the  profounder  study  of  the  deeper  book  of  hu- 
man nature,  to  learn  to  ask  questions. 

And  the  boy's  questions  have  a  philosophical 
meaning  behind  them.  I  remember  going  to  a 
.World's  Fair,  once  upon  a  time,  with  a  boy  with 
whom  I  loved  very  dearly  to  travel — he  showed  me 
so  many  more  things  than  I  could  have  seen  by 
myself.  One  day  we  ran  up  against  a  great  big 
electric  incubator,  a  machine  where  they  hatched 
chickens  by  lightning.  I  have  eaten  some  I  thought 
had  been  struck  by  lightning  in  order  to  kill  them. 
But  this  machine  hatched  them  out.  I  thought  it 
was  an  excellent  opportunity  to  give  the  boy  a  little 
instruction  in  practical  biology.  I  said :  "Is  it  not 
wonderful,  my  son,  to  see  how  the  little  chicken 
comes  out  of  the  egg?"  He  said :  "No.  I  don't  see 
anything  remarkable  about  that.  I  see  easy  enough 
how  he  gets  out.  What  puzzles  me  is  how  the  little 
beggar  got  in!" 

Here  is  a  man  sitting  down  some  evening,  who 
18 


THE  RISE  AND  FALL  OF  THE  MUSTACHE 

wants  to  read  about  twenty  pounds  of  evening  paper 
before  he  goes  to  bed,  and  his  little  son  is  assisting 
him  with  irrelevant  questions  about  various  things. 
The  wearied  parent  lowers  the  paper  a  little  bit. 
''Bobbie,"  he  says,  "I  will  let  you  have  one  more 
question  to-night;  then  I  don't  want  to  hear  the 
sound  of  your  voice  for  six  weeks."  Bobbie  has  one 
right  on  the  hair-trigger,  ready  to  fire  when  he  gets 
the  word.  "Pa,"  he  says,  "is  it  true,  what  this  book 
says,  that  a  camel  can  go  forty  days  without  water?" 
"Yes,  he  can.  Now,  shut  up."  By  and  by  the  boy 
pleads — "Just  one  more."  His  father  says :  "Well, 
if  it  is  a  foolish  one,  you  go  to  bed."  The  boy  says : 
"How  long  could  he  go  if  he  had  water?"  And  the 
next  minute  Bobbie  is  under  the  blankets.  Not  to 
get  warm — oh,  no ;  he  gets  warm  on  the  way  up. 

So,  by  and  by  we  send  the  boy  to  school,  and  then 
he  realizes  that  they  are  increased  that  rise  up 
against  him.  Because  now  other  people  ask  the 
questions,  and  he  has  to  answer  them.  He  learns 
how  to  sympathize  with  his  parents.  He  gets 
tangled  in  the  ungrammatical  mazes  of  the  English 
grammar,  which  has  not  yet  been  invented,  and  he 
19 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

gets  blocked  by  mathematics.  "Do  you  not  know — " 
the  dear  patient  teacher  was  looking  at  a  cluster  of 
errors  on  the  blackboard — "do  you  not  know  that 
always  and  under  all  circumstances  two  and  two 
make  four?"  The  boy  said:  "No,  sir;  I  do  not." 
"What  else  can  it  possibly  make?"  And  the  boy 
said:  "It  depends.  If  you  put  one  two  in  front  of 
the  other,  it  makes  twenty-two  every  time." 

And  yet,  all  the  time  the  boy  is  asking  questions  he 
is  answering  them,  until  we  stand  amazed  at  the 
breadth  and  depth  of  his  knowledge.  He  asks  ques- 
tions and  gets  answers  of  teachers  that  we  and  the 
school  board  know  not  of.  Day  by  day,  great  un- 
printed  books,  upon  the  broad  pages  of  which  the 
hand  of  nature  has  traced  characters  that  only  a  boy 
can  read,  are  spread  out  before  him.  He  knows  now 
where  the  first  snow-drop  lifts  its  tiny  head,  a  pearl 
on  the  bosom  of  the  barren  earth,  in  the  spring;  he 
knows  where  the  last  Indian  pink  lingers,  a  flame  in 
the  brown  and  rustling  woods,  in  the  autumn  days. 
His  pockets  are  cabinets,  from  which  he  drags  curi- 
ous fossils,  hideous  beetles  and  bugs  and  things  that 
you  never  saw  before,  and  for  which  he  has  appro- 
20 


THE  RISE  AND  FALL  OF  THE  MUSTACHE 

priate  names  of  his  own.  He  knows  where  there  are 
three  orioles'  nests,  and  so  far  back  as  you  can  re- 
member you  never  saw  an  oriole's  nest  in  your  life. 
He  can  tell  you  how  to  distinguish  the  good  mush- 
rooms from  the  poisonous  ones,  and  poison  grapes 
from  good  ones,  and  how  he  ever  found  out,  except 
by  eating  both  kinds,  is  a  mystery  to  his  mother. 
Every  root,  bud,  leaf,  berry  or  bark  that  will  make 
any  bitter  tea,  reputed  to  have  marvelous  medicinal 
virtues,  he  knows  where  to  find,  and  in  the  season  he 
does  find,  and  brings  home,  and  all  but  sends  the 
entire  family  to  the  cemetery  by  making  practical 
tests  of  his  remedies. 

As  his  knowledge  broadens,  his  Human  supersti- 
tion develops  itself.  He  has  a  formula,  repeating 
which  nine  times  a  day,  while  pointing  his  finger 
fixedly  toward  the  sun,  will  cause  warts  to  disappear 
from  the  hand.  If  the  eight-day  clock  at  home  tells 
him  it  is  two  o'clock,  and  the  flying  leaves  of  the 
dandelion  declare  it  is  half  past  five,  he  will  stand  or 
fall  with  the  dandelion. 

He  has  a  charm  by  which  anything  that  has  been 
lost  may  be  found.  He  has  a  natural  instinct  for  the 
21 


OLD    TIME   AND    YOUNG   TOM 

woods,  and  can  no  more  be  lost  in  them  than  a 
squirrel.  If  the  cow  does  not  come  home — and  if 
she  is  a  town  cow,  like  a  town  man,  she  does  not 
come  home,  three  nights  in  the  week — you  lose  half 
a  day  of  valuable  time  looking  for  her.  Then  you 
pay  a  man  three  dollars  to  look  for  her  two  days 
longer,  or  as  long  as  the  appropriation  holds  out. 
Finally,  a  quarter  sends  a  boy  to  the  woods;  he 
comes  back  at  milking-time,  whistling  the  tune  that 
no  man  ever  imitated,  and  the  cow  ambles  content- 
edly along  before  him. 

He  has  one  particular  marble  which  he  regards 
with  about  the  same  superstitious  reverence  that  a 
pagan  does  his  idol.  Carnelian,  crystal,  bull's-eye, 
china,  pottery,  boly,  blood  alley,  or  commie,  what- 
ever he  may  call  it,  there  is  "luck  in  it".  When  he 
loses  this  marble,  he  sees  panic  and  bankruptcy 
ahead  of  him,  and  retires  from  business  prudently, 
before  the  crash  comes,  failing,  in  true  commercial 
style,  with  both  pockets  full  of  winnings,  and  a 
creditors'  meeting  in  the  back  room. 

A  boy's  world  is  open  to  no  one  but  a  boy.  You 
never  really  revisit  the  glimpses  of  your  boyhood, 
22 


THE  RISE  AND  FALL  OF  THE  MUSTACHE 

much  as  you  may  dream  of  it.  After  you  get  into  a 
tail-coat  and  tight  boots,  you  never  again  set  foot  in 
boy  world.  You  lose  this  instinct  for  the  woods; 
you  can't  tell  a  pig-nut  tree  from  a  pecan ;  you  can't 
make  friends  with  strange  dogs ;  you  can't  make  the 
terrific  noises  with  your  mouth ;  you  can't  invent  the 
inimitable  signals  or  the  characteristic  catchwords 
of  boyhood. 

He  is  getting  on,  is  your  boy.  He  reaches  the 
dime-novel  age.  He  wants  to  be  a  missionary,  or  a 
pirate.  As  far  as  he  expresses  any  preference,  he 
would  rather  be  a  pirate,  an  occupation  in  which 
there  are  more  chances  for  making  money,  and 
fewer  opportunities  for  being  devoured.  He  de- 
velops a  yearning  love  for  school  and  study  about 
this  time,  and  every  time  he  dreams  of  being  a 
pirate  he  dreams  of  hanging  his  dear  teacher  at  the 
yard-arm  in  the  presence  of  the  delighted  scholars. 
His  voice  develops,  even  more  rapidly  and  thor- 
oughly than  his  morals.  In  the  yard,  on  the  house- 
top, down  the  street,  around  the  corner;  wherever 
there  is  a  patch  of  ice  big  enough  for  him  to  break 
his  neck  on,  or  a  pond  of  water  deep  enough  to 
23 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

drown  in,  the  voice  of  your  -boy  is  heard.  He  whis- 
pers in  a  shout,  and  converses,  in  confidential  mo- 
ments, in  a  shriek.  He  exchanges  bits  of  back-fence 
gossip  about  his  father's  domestic  matters  with  the 
boy  living  in  the  adjacent  township,  to  which  inter- 
esting revelations  of  home  life  the  intermediate 
neighborhood  listens  with  intense  satisfaction,  and 
the  two  home  circles  in  helpless  dismay. 

He  has  an  unconquerable  hatred  for  company,  and 
an  aversion  for  walking  down-stairs.  For  a  year  or 
two  his  feet  never  touch  the  stairway  in  his  descent, 
and  his  habit  of  polishing  the  stair  rail  by  using  it  as 
a  passenger  tramway  soon  breaks  the  other  members 
of  the  family  of  the  careless  habit  of  setting  a  lamp 
or  water-pitcher  on  the  newel  post.  He  wears  the 
same  size  boot  as  his  father ;  and  on  the  driest  dusti- 
est days  in  the  year,  always  manages  to  convey 
some  mud  on  the  carpets.  He  carefully  steps  over 
the  door-mat,  and  until  he  is  about  seventeen  years 
old  he  actually  never  knew  there  was  a  scraper  at  the 
front  porch. 

About  this  time,  bold  but  inartistic  pencil  sketches 
break  out  mysteriously  on  the  alluring  background 
24 


THE  RISE  AND  FALL  OF  THE  MUSTACHE 

of  the  wall-paper:  He  asks,  with  great  regularity, 
alarming  frequency,  and  growing  diffidence,  for  a 
new  hat.  You  might  as  well  buy  him  a  new  dispo- 
sition. He  wears  his  hat  in  the  air  and  on  the 
ground  far  more  than  he  does  on  his  head,  and  he 
never  hangs  it  up  that  he  doesn't  pull  the  hook 
through  the  crown,  unless  the  hook  breaks  off  or  the 
hat-rack  pulls  over. 

He  is  a  perfect  Robinson  Crusoe  in  inventive 
genius.  He  can  make  a  kite  that  will  fly  higher  and 
pull  harder  than  a  balloon.  He  can  take  out  a  couple 
of  the  pantry  shelves  and  make  a  sled  that  is  amaze- 
ment itself.  The  mouse-trap  he  builds  out  of  the 
water-pitcher  and  the  family  album  is  a  marvel  of 
mechanical  ingenuity.  So  is  the  excuse  he  gives  for 
such  a  selection  of  raw  material.  When,  suddenly, 
some  Monday  morning,  the  clothes-line,  without  any 
just  or  apparent  cause  or  provocation,  shrinks  six- 
teen feet,  philosophy  can  not  make  you  believe  that 
the  weather  man  did  it  with  his  little  barometer. 
Because,  far  down  the  dusty  street,  you  can  see  Tom 
in  the  dim  distance,  driving  a  prancing  team,  six-in- 
hand,  with  the  missing  link. 
25 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

You  send  your  boy  on  an  errand.  There  are  three 
ladies  in  the  parlor.  You  have  waited  as  long  as 
you  can,  in  all  courtesy,  for  them  to  go.  They  have 
developed  alarming  symptoms  of  staying  to  tea. 
And  you  know  there  aren't  half  enough  strawberries 
to  go  around.  It  is  only  a  three-minutes'  walk  to  the 
grocery,  however,  and  Tom  sets  off  like  a  rocket, 
and  you  are  so  pleased  with  his  celerity  and  ready 
good  nature  that  you  want  to  run  after  him  and  kiss 
him.  He  is  gone  a  long  time,  however.  Ten  min- 
utes become  fifteen,  fifteen  grow  into  twenty,  the 
twenty  swell  into  the  half  hour,  and  your  guests  ex- 
change very  significant  glances  as  the  half  becomes 
three-quarters.  Your  boy  returns  at  last, — appre- 
hension in  his  downcast  eyes,  humility  in  his  laggard 
step,  penitence  in  the  appealing  slouch  of  his  battered 
hat,  and  a  pound  and  a  half  of  shingle  nails  in  his 
hands. 

"Mother,"  he  says,  "what  else  was  it  you  told  me 
to  get  besides  the  nails  ?"  And  while  you  are  count- 
ing your  scanty  store  of  berries  to  make  them  go 
round  without  a  fraction,  you  hear  Tom  out  in  the 
back  yard  whistling  and  hammering  away,  building 
26 


THE  RISE  AND  FALL  OF  THE  MUSTACHE 

a  dog-house  with  the  nails  you  never  told  him  to  get. 

Poor  Tom,  he  loves  at  this  age  quite  as  ardently 
as  he  makes  mistakes  and  mischief.  And  he  is  re- 
pulsed quite  as  ardently  as  he  makes  love.  If  he 
hugs  his  sister,  he  musses  her  ruffle,  and  gets  cuffed 
for  it.  Two  hours  later  another  boy,  not  more  than 
twenty-two  or  twenty-three  years  older  than  Tom, 
some  neighbor's  Tom,  will  come  in,  and  will  just 
make  the  most  hopeless,  terrible,  chaotic  wreck  of 
that  ruffle  that  lace  can  be  distorted  into.  And  the 
only  reproof  he  gets  is  the  reproachful  murmur, 
"Must  go  so  soon?"  when  he  doesn't  make  a 
move  to  go  until  he  hears  the  alarm  clock  up-stairs 
and  the  old  gentleman  in  the  adjoining  room  bang- 
ing around  building  the  morning  fires,  and  loudly 
wondering  if  young  Mr.  Bostwick  is  going  to  stay 
to  breakfast. 

Tom  is  at  this  age  set  in  deadly  enmity  against 
"company",  which  he  soon  learns  to  regard  as  his 
mortal  foe.  He  regards  "company"  as  a  mysterious 
and  eminently  respectable  delegation  that  always 
stays  to  dinner,  invariably  crowds  him  to  the  second 
table,  never  leaves  him  any  of  the  pie,  and  usually 
27 


OLD  TIME  AND   YOUNG  TOM 

makes  him  late  for  school.  Naturally,  he  learns  to 
love  refined  society,  but  in  a  conservative  non- 
committal sort  of  way,  dissembling  his  love  so  ef- 
fectually that  even  his  parents  never  dream  of  its 
existence  until  it  is  gone. 

Tom's  life  is  not  all  comedy  in  the  happy  days  of 
boyhood.  Sometimes,  after  a  troubled  day  at  school, 
where  he  has  had  conflicts  with  teachers  and  books, 
and  other  boys,  he  comes  home  in  the  eventide  with 
joyous  anticipations — home,  a  sure  refuge  for  him  ; 
home,  where  love,  with  many  caresses,  will  make  up 
for  all  his  troubles.  He  isn't  in  the  house  ten  min- 
utes before  somebody  "tells  on  him".  It  doesn't 
make  much  difference  what  you  tell  on  a  boy ;  most 
anything  hits  him  somewhere.  He  can't  dodge 
everything  when  it  rains  "informations".  The  boy 
comes  galloping  home,  empty  as  a  drum,  hungrier 
than  a  shark,  and  with  an  appetite  like  an  ostrich. 
He  hears  his  father's  voice,  gentle,  patient,  firm, 
calling,  "Thomas!"  Well,  that  gives  the  boy  cold 
feet.  When  his  father  says  "Tpm",  he  knows  the 
barometer  is  "set  fair".  When  he  says  "Thomas", 
the  boy  is  at  once  aware  that  the  investigating  com- 
28 


THE  RISE  AND  FALL  OF  THE  MUSTACHE 

mittee  is  in  session,  with  power  to  send  for  persons, 
and  to  act. 

Tom  goes  before  him  wondering  and  apprehen- 
sive. "My  son,  what  is  that  I  hear  about  you  to- 
day?" Well,  Tom  is  no  prophet.  How  can  he  tell 
what  anybody  has  heard  about  him  that  day?  It 
is  all  he  can  do  to  keep  track  of  the  thrilling  inci- 
dents of  his  career.  But,  like  most  boys  under 
the  circumstances,  Tom  is  a  mighty  good  guesser. 
He  can  always  guess  what  his  father  has  been  very 
likely  to  hear  about  if  he  isn't  deaf  and  blind. 
When  he  guesses  what  it  is,  being  a  good  honest 
boy,  he  owns  up.  When  the  average  boy  sees 
trouble  coming  down  a  narrow  lane  to  meet  him, 
and  he  can't  run  around  either  end,  or  get  through 
the  center,  or  crawl  under,  or  climb  over,  he  owns 
up.  He  makes  a  full  and  frank  confession,  to  save 
the  trouble  and  expense  of  a  trial  before  a  preju- 
diced court.  Not  being  an  infallible  guesser,  how- 
ever, two  or  three  times  he  "owns  up"  to  the  wrong 
thing — something  his  father  hasn't  heard  a  word 
about.  Then  he  is  in  for  two  of  them — one  for  the 
case  the  court  had  information  about,  and  one  for 
29 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

the  one  confessed.  After  one  or  two  breaks  of  that 
kind  the  boy  learns  the  wisdom  of  the  serpent,  and 
when  next  his  father  asks  him  what  it  is  he  has 
heard  about  him  that  day,  Tom  says,  "If  it  please 
the  court,  I  would  rather  hear  the  indictment  read 
before  I  plead."  It  takes  a  little  longer  but  it's 
safer  for  the  defendant. 

Sometimes  when  the  tragedies  of  the  day  have 
been  unusually  painful;  when,  after  the  closing  act 
wherein  the  boy's  foes  have  been  they  of  his  own 
household,  Tom,  feeling  that  nobody  in  all  the  world 
loves  him  or  cares  for  him;  believing  honestly  that 
he  is  in  everybody's  way,  has  crawled  off  to  his  own 
room,  and  cried  himself  to  sleep.  For  no  one  can 
feel  a  deeper  pity  for,  or  a  tenderer  sympathy  with 
any  one  else,  then  a  boy  can  entertain  for  himself, 
when  he  gives  himself  up  to  the  luxury  of  personal 
woe.  By  and  by,  you,  being  the  boy's  mother,  rise 
and  gently  steal  away  after  him,  sometimes,  it  may 
be,  pausing  at  the  sitting-room  door  to  explain — as 
though  the  sweetest  thing  the  mother  ever  does  re- 
quires explanation  or  apology — that  you  are  just 
going  up  to  Tom's  room  to  see  that  he  is  "tucked  in 
30 


THE  RISE  AND  FALL  OF  THE  MUSTACHE 

nicely  for  the  night."  Tuck  a  boy  in  for  the  night ! 
You  can  wrap  and  roll  him  up  in  quilt  and  blanket 
until  he  looks  like  a  cocoon  or  a  mummy,  and  then, 
the  first  time  he  turns  over,  there  won't  be  a  rag  on 
the  bed.  You  might  as  well  try  to  tuck  in  a  hound 
pup  as  a  boy.  He  sleeps  as  actively  as  he  plays  ball. 

He  has  earned  his  sleep.  The  curtain  has  fallen 
on  one  day's  act  in  the  drama  of  a  boy's  life.  The 
restless  feet  that  all  day  long  have  pattered  and 
wandered  so  far — down  dusty  roads,  over  hot  pave- 
ments, through  long  stretches  of  quiet  wooded  lanes, 
along  the  winding  cattle  paths  in  the  deep  silent 
woods ;  that  have  dabbled  in  the  cool  brook  where  it 
babbles  and  dimples  over  the  shining  pebbles,  that 
have  filled  your  house  with  noise  and  dust  and  racket, 
are  still.  The  stained  hand  outside  the  sheet  is  soiled 
and  rough,  and  the  cut  finger,  with  the  rude  bandage 
of  the  boy's  own  surgery,  pleads  with  a  mute  effec- 
tive pathos  of  its  own  for  the  mischievous  hand  that 
is  never  idle. 

On  the  brown  cheek  the  trace  of  a  tear  marks  the 
piteous  close  of  the  day's  troubles,  the  closing  scene 
in  a  troubled  little  drama;  trouble  at  school  with 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

books  that  were  top  many  for  him;  trouble  with 
temptations  to  have  unlawful  fun  that  were  too 
strong  for  him,  as  they  are  frequently  too  strong  for 
his  father ;  trouble  in  the  street  with  boys  that  were 
too  big  for  him ;  at  last,  in  his  home,  in  his  castle,  his 
refuge,  trouble  has  pursued  him,  until,  feeling  ut- 
terly friendless  and  in  everybody's  way,  he  crawled 
off  to  the  dismantled  den,  dignified  by  the  title  of 
"the  boy's  room".  His  overcharged  heart  has  welled 
up  into  his  eyes,  his  waking  breath  has  broken  into  a 
sob,  and  just  as  he  begins  to  think  that,  after  all,  life 
is  only  one  broad  sea  of  troubles,  whose  restless  bil- 
lows, in  never-ending  succession,  break  and  beat  and 
double  upon  the  short  shore-line  of  a  boy's  life,  he 
has  drifted  away  into  the  wonderland  of  a  boy's 
sleep,  where  fairy  fingers  picture  his  dreams. 

How  soundly,  deeply,  peacefully  he  sleeps!  No 
mother,  who  has  never  dragged  a  sleepy  boy  off  the 
lounge  at  nine  o'clock,  and  hauled  him  off  up-stairs 
to  bed,  can  know  with  what  a  herculean  grip  a 
square  sleep  takes  hold  of  a  boy's  senses,  nor  how 
fearfully  and  wonderfully  limp  and  nerveless  it 
makes  him;  nor  how,  in  direct  antagonism  to  all 
32 


THE  RISE  AND  FALL  OF  THE  MUSTACHE 

established  laws  of  anatomy,  it  develops  joints  that 
work  both  ways,  all  the  way  up  and  down,  before 
and  behind  that  boy. 

And  what  pen  can  portray  the  wonderful  enchant- 
ments of  a  boy's  dreamland !  No  marvelous  visions 
wrought  by  the  weird  power  of  hashish,  no  dreams 
that  come  to  the  sleep  of  jaded  woman  or  tired  man, 
no  ghastly  specters  that  dance  attendance  upon  cold 
mince  pie,  but  shrink  into  stale  and  trifling  common- 
places compared  with  the  marvelous,  the  grotesque, 
the  wonderful,  the  terrible,  the  beautiful  and  the 
enchanting  scenes  and  people  of  a  boy's  dreamland. 
This  may  be  owing,  in  a  great  measure,  to  the  fact 
that  the  boy  never  relates  his  dream  until  all  the 
members  of  the  family  have  related  theirs ;  and  then 
he  comes  in,  like  a  back  county,  with  the  necessary 
majority. 

We  love  to  go  to  the  rooms  where  the  "little 
people"  sleep.  We  go  there  because,  when  the  day 
is  gone,  when  the  twilight  fades  into  night  and  the 
stars  come  out,  when  all  the  world  is  hushed  and  all 
the  house  is  still,  we  remember,  in  that  quiet  mo- 
ment, how  cross  we  have  been  with  the  child,  how 
33 


OLD    TIME   AND    YOUNG    TOM 

unjust  we  have  been ;  how  many  times  the  little  ones 
have  worried  and  fretted  us.  We  may  remember, 
too,  how  once,  not  because  of  anything  worthy  of 
sudden  punishment  the  boy  has  done,  but  because 
some  one  else,  too  big  for  us  to  punish,  even  with  an 
expression  of  resentment,  had  irritated  the  over- 
tense  nerves,  we  struck  the  boy  out  of  our  way.  And 
in  this  quiet  of  the  night  and  the  watching  stars,  we 
remember  how  we  ourselves,  wayward  and  perverse 
children  that  we  are,  have  tempted  and  defied  in- 
finite love  and  measureless  patience  all  along  the 
way  of  that  day's  pilgrimage. 

And  somehow  the  bed  where  the  little  ones  sleep 
transforms  itself  into  a  homely  kind  of  altar.  We 
love  to  kneel  down  beside  their  innocence  and  lift  up 
our  hearts  to  the  great  All- father  and  ask  for  the 
blessing  of  sleep.  Not  for  the  children — oh,  no; 
they  sleep  well  enough.  The  flossy  heads  just  touch 
the  pillow,  and  the  little  hearts  go  drifting  out  into 
the  beautiful  wonderland  of  childhood's  dreams. 
They  sleep  well  enough.  We  pray  that  the  blessing 
of  sleep  may  come  down  like  the  touch  of  God's  ca- 
ressing hand  upon  our  own  restless  brains,  our  own 
34 


THE  RISE  AND  FALL  OF  THE  MUSTACHE 

troubled  hearts,  our  own  accusing  consciences.  We 
need  to  be  hushed  and  lulled  and  soothed  to  sleep  by 
the  blessed  promises  upon  which  we  pillow  our  sob- 
bing hearts.  The  little  children  sleep  well  enough,  for 
they  are  folded  in  the  trustfulness  of  innocence.  It 
is  the  "grown-up  children,"  the  children  of  many; 
years,  who  have  to  be  hushed  to  sleep  every  night  by 
the  love  that  is  wider  than  all  the  seas  and  higher 
than  the  farthest  star. 

The  boy's  room!  The  room  itself  is  a  comically- 
pathetic  appeal  to  the  heart  of  mother  or  father. 
The  boy's  room — well,  it  is  better  than  it  used  to  be, 
I  am  glad  to  say,  but  it  is  not  perfection  yet.  The 
mother  protests.  "It  is  a  very  nice  room  for  a  boy, 
and  besides,"  she  says,  "the  boy  never  goes  into  the 
room  till  after  dark."  That's  right.  The  boy 
doesn't  want  to  go  into  that  room  while  he  can  see 
anything  in  it.  If  he  did,  he'd  have  a  nightmare. 

The  mother  says :  "Well,  it  is  small,  but  then  we 
furnish  it  for  him  very  nicely."  Yes,  we  do;  not. 
Furnish  the  boy's  room  nicely!  We  furnish  it  se- 
curely. We  are  not  going  to  have  his  life  risked  by 
any  untoward  accident  because  of  weak  untried  fur- 
35 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

niture.  We  give  him  furniture  that  has  been  care- 
fully tested.  It  has  been  graduated  from  every 
room  in  the  house,  and  has  taken  a  postgraduate 
course  in  the  kitchen.  "Well,"  the  mother  says, 
"that  is  all  right,  because  the  boy  kicks  to  pieces 
everything  you  put  in  there,  anyhow."  So  he  does, 
He  thinks  that  is  what  his  furniture  is  for,  to  kick 
to  pieces.  He  sees  everybody  else  has  had  a  kick  at 
it,  so  he  goes  in  for  a  scrappy  game  with  it,  and 
makes  his  touch-down  in  the  first  half.  There  is  no 
second  half  to  his  furniture.  "Oh,  well,"  some  one 
says,  "you  don't  understand  boys.  They  don't  care 
for  nice  things.  Almost  anything  will  do  for  a 
boy."  Don't  fool  yourself,  good  mother.  A  boy 
does  love  nice  things  and  pretty  things.  A  boy  has 
better  taste,  is  more  artistic,  he  has  more  correct 
ideas  of  the  beautiful,  the  fair  and  the  good  than 
his  sister.  He  proves  this  when  he  is  married.  Just 
looki  at  the  thing  his  sister  marries!  Don't  you 
talk  to  me  about  that  girl's  superior  taste ! 

I  was  in  Cleveland,  once  upon  a  time,  attending  a 
meeting  of  the  Boys'  Y.  M.  C.  A.,  for  boys,  under 
eighteen  down  to  little  fellows  of  twelve.  Well, 

36 


THE  RISE  AND  FALL  OF  THE  MUSTACHE 

one  Christmas-time  the  ladies  of  the  "West  Side" 
gave  the  boys  a  loan  exhibition  of  calendars.  They 
had  every  room  tapestried  with  calendars.  Beauti- 
ful calendars,  romantic  calendars,  sentimental  calen- 
dars, warlike  calendars,  comic  calendars,  religious 
and  commercial  calendars — every  sort  of  calendar. 
The  last  day  of  the  exhibition  they  took  a  secret 
vote  of  the  boys  to  select  the  picture  they  loved  best. 
Of  course  everybody  guessed  what  the  boys  would 
take — a  bear  hunt  or  a  boat  race,  a  sea-fight,  some- 
thing funny  or  heroic — something  that  we  would 
say  "appealed  to  boys". 

With,  I  think,  less  than  a  dozen  dissenting  votes, 
the  boys  selected  Raphael's  Madonna,  the  last  picture 
anybody  guessed  would  be  selected  by  boys  at  their 
very  rough,  rollicking,  coltish  age.  But  the  helpless- 
ness and  innocence  and  the  sweetness  of  the  little  one 
in  her  arms ;  the  look  of  universal  mother-love  in  the 
Madonna  face,  caught  the  hearts  of  those  boys,  and 
that  was  their  picture.  They  never  would  have  done 
that  if  they  had  voted  by  holding  up  their  hands.  A 
boy  is  more  sensitive  in  some  heart  matters  than  a 
girl,  and  he  could  never  let  you  see  down  into  the 
37 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

sentimental  part  of  his  heart — never;  an  open  vote 
would  have  selected  an  Indian  fight,  a  tiger  hunt  or 
the  battle  of  Manila  Bay. 

What  was  the  second  choice  ?  There  is  a  picture 
< — you  have  seen  it  repeated  in  lithograph  a  great 
many  times — called  The  Physician.  The  scene  is 
a  poverty-stricken  garret  room ;  rough  rafters  show- 
ing; a  rude  little  pallet  made  by  turning  two  chairs 
together.  On  the  bed  lies  a  little  girl.  The  physi- 
cian, a  man  of  about  fifty,  with  grizzled  beard,  has 
turned  the  cheap  paper  shade  on  the  lamp  so  as  to 
focus  all  the  light  on  the  white  little  face.  The 
parted  lips  tell  of  the  fever  that  is  devouring  her. 
The  little  hand  lies  loosely  over  the  side  of  the  chair, 
just  as  the  physician's  fingers  have  let  go  of  the 
wrist. 

Standing  in  the  shadow  at  the  foot  of  the  bed 
are  a  working-man  and  a  woman.  He  is  holding 
her  in  his  arms,  her  head  buried  on  his  shoulder. 
You  can  hear  the  sobs  that  are  shaking  her  figure. 
The  man  clasps  her  in  his  embrace,  tenderly,  lov- 
ingly, with  all  the  comfort  his  heart  and  arms  can 
give.  So  poor  they  are,  they  have  nothing  in  this 
38 


THE  RISE  AND  FALL  OF  THE  MUSTACHE 

world  but  what  they  can  carry  into  the  other  world 
— love.  The  man's  eyes  are  turned  in  an  agonizing 
question  upon  the  face  of  the  physician,  whose  look 
is  bent  upon  the  tiny  charity  patient,  grave,  earnest, 
anxious,  as  though  he  sat  at  the  bedside  of  a  queen. 
This  scene  of  poverty,  and  sorrow,  and  love,  and 
loyal  devotion — this  picture  was  the  second  choice 
of  these  boys.  And  all  the  funny  and  fighting  pic- 
tures received  only  a  few  scattering  votes.  There  is 
a  little  bit  of  womanish  tenderness  and  sentiment  in 
the  heart  of  every  boy.  You  see,  his  mother  is  a 
woman,  and  he  has  just  a  touch  of  her  nature. 

Give  him  a  whole  room  for  his  very  own.  It  isn't 
only  the  boy  who  suffers.  The  man,  when  he  begins 
to  prosper,  builds  a  new  house.  His  wife  designs  it, 
and  gets  two  or  three  closets  in  every  room.  She 
says  to  the  man,  "Here,  you  have  always  complained 
that  you  never  had  any  place  to  put  your  things 
about  the  house.  Now,  here  is  the  biggest  clothes 
closet  in  this  house,  eight  feet  wide,  ten  feet  deep, 
twelve  feet  high,  three  rows  of  hooks  on  two  sides, 
two  rows  of  shelving,  and  a  locker  at  the  farther 
end.  This  is  all  for  the  man — there  is  nothing  to  go 
39 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

in  there  but  the  man's  things !"  Oh,  how  proud  and 
rich  you  feel !  That  is  Monday  moming.  By  Satur- 
day night  you  are  lucky  if  you  have  one  hook.  If 
you  complain  about  it,  your  wife  says  she  "has  to 
have  some  place  for  her  things." 

Let  your  boy  help  to  furnish  and  decorate  his  own 
room.  While  he  must  have  in  it  a  great  many  things 
that  we  like,  let  him  have  a  few  tilings  that  he  likes. 
It's  his  room.  The  treasures  he  brings  home  from 
field  and  wood  and  stream  are  more  precious  to  him 
than  the  things  that  money  can  buy.  But  often, 
when  we  find  these  treasures  in  the  boy's  room,  we 
throw  them  out  of  the  window  and  tell  him  we  don't 
want  him  to  drag  all  the  "trash"  in  the  county  into 
that  room.  Then  we  pile  a  lot  of  our  own  "trash" 
into  it,  because  we  have  nowhere  else  to  bestow  it. 

When  you  buy  pictures  for  the  boy,  don't  put  him 
off  with  advertisement  pictures  that  you  try  to  put 
into  an  old  looking-glass  frame  which  never  did  fit 
anything.  Buy  him  new  pictures,  especially  appro- 
priate to  a  boy's  room.  Have  them  framed  down  at 
the  shop,  as  you  do  the  pictures  for  the  drawing- 
room  and  the  hall.  And  let  the  boy  go  down  and  se- 
40 


THE  RISE  AND  FALL  OF  THE  MUSTACHE 

lect  one  or  two  pictures  all  by  himself.  Don't  you  go 
with  him.  I  know  what  you  would  do.  You  would 
say,  "Now,  dear,  I  don't  want  to  influence  you,  but 
you  must  not  buy  this  picture."  "Well,"  the  mother 
or  the  father  says,  "he  is  a  boy ;  he  is  rough ;  he  will 
buy  something  awful."  Perhaps  he  may.  Let  him 
buy  it.  If  the  boy  likes  "rough"  things,  train  him 
out  of  the  liking  for  them  gradually  and  sweetly,  by 
giving  him  better  things. 

And  I'm  not  so  certain  that  what  we  call  "rough" 
things  are  not  a  rather  important  part  of  a  boy's 
education.  I  believe  it's  a  good  thing  to  have  one  or 
two  good  hard-fighting  pictures  in  a  boy's  room. 
They  will  inspire  him  to  give  and  take  hard  knocks. 
He  must  be  a  fighter  himself  if  he  amounts  to  any- 
thing in  the  world.  He  must  learn  courage.  And 
he  must  learn  that  it  will  require  the  noblest,  highest, 
most-enduring  type  of  courage  in  all  this  world  to 
enable  him  to  fight  against  and  to  conquer  the  mean- 
est, strongest,  most  treacherous,  most  persistent  and 
relentless  enemy  he  will  ever  encounter  in  this  life — 
that  is  himself.  The  "fighting  picture"  need  not 
make  a  slugger  of  the  boy.  It  will  probably  save 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

him  from  such  a  fate.  The  modern  pugilist  is  not  a 
fighter.  He  is  a  talker.  All  wars  have  been  terrible. 
All  wars  have  not  been  wicked.  Napoleon  Bona- 
parte was  one  soldier.  George  Washington  was  an- 
other. 

Instead  of  the  "fighting  picture",  we  sometimes 
put  into  his  room  a  work  of  art  by  "ma",  a  little 
thing  she  did  herself,  when  she  went  to  school.  It  is 
a  picture  of  a  flower,  done  in  pastel,  faded  and 
blended  with  the  touch  of  the  years.  The  flower 
grows  on  a  lightning-rod.  A  leaf  on  this  side — a 
leaf  on  that  side — leaf,  leaf — leaf,  leaf — and  right 
on  the  tiptop  of  the  rod,  the  flower.  You  couldn't 
break  a  petal  off  that  chrysanthemum  with  a  mallet 
and  a  cold-chisel.  You  can't  hang  it  in  the  drawing- 
room,  because  people  will  ask  what  it  is.  And  you 
are  afraid  to  hang  it  in  your  own  bedroom.  You 
might  wake  up  in  the  night  and  see  it.  So  you  put 
it  in  the  boy's  room.  You  tell  him  it's  "pretty". 

Get  nice  furnishings  for  the  boy's  room.     When 

you  get  him  a  dressing-table,  get  him  something 

handsome,  with  at  least  two  legs  of  the  same  length. 

The  boy  would  be  satisfied  with  that,  but  usually  the 

42 


THE  RISE  AND  FALL  OF  THE  MUSTACHE 

boy's  table  hasn't  even  one  leg  of  the  same  length. 
Have  an  embroidered  cover  for  it,  such  as  his  sister 
makes  for  some  other  fellow's  table.  His  mother 
says,  "That  wouldn't  do  at  all,  because  every  time 
the  boy  washes  his  face  you  have  to  change  the  table 
cover."  I  know  that.  Every  time  the  boy  washes 
his  face  everything  on  that  side  of  the  room  is  soak- 
ing, sopping,  dripping  wet.  With  one  exception — 
that's  his  face.  That  comes  through  dry-shod.  He 
can  use  more  water  and  wash  less  face  than  any- 
thing else  on  earth,  except  a  cat. 

When  you  get  him  a  looking-glass,  get  him  a  fine 
mirror,  plate-glass,  with  beveled  edge,  and  an  artistic 
frame.  You  ask  the  man  for  something  real  nice  in 
the  way  of  mirrors,  and  he  shows  you  something 
like  that.  "This,"  he  says,  "will  be  ten  dollars  and 
a  half,  to  you."  "Oh,"  you  say,  "this  is  for  a  boy's 
room."  "Oh,"  the  man  says.  Now,  that  is  all  you 
say,  and  that  is  all  the  man  says — you  just  say 
"Oh."  There  is  no  word  in  the  English  language 
that  is  capable  of  more  variety  of  expression  than 
the  monosyllable  "Oh." 

The  man  knows  just  what  you  want.  They  carry 
43 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

them  in  special  lines  in  the  furniture  stores,  called 
"boy's  mirrors".  They  come  two  hundred  in  a 
crate,  a  dollar  and  a  half  a  crate.  The  frame 
looks  as  though  it  had  some  cutaneous  disor- 
der. The  glass  is  blistered  and  corrugated  and 
wrinkled  like  an  old  wash-board.  The  boy  looks  into 
it  and  is  horrified.  He  discovers  therein  a  half 
dozen  sectional  boys,  with  only  one  eye  for  the  six 
of  them.  He  comes  down-stairs,  and  we  say  to  him, 
"Go  right  back  to  your  room  and  brush  your  hair. 
How  dare  you  come  down  to  breakfast  with  your 
hair  standing  around  like  a  quarter-back's?"  "Well," 
he  says,  "I  did  brush  all  the  heads  I  could  see!" 

That  is  the  room  some  boys  grow  up  in.  People 
wonder  sometimes  the  boy  has  so  little  native  refine- 
ment. The  only  wonder  is  that  he  has  any. 

The  boy  is  growing.  He  enters  the  hobbledehoy 
stage  of  life.  For  a  little  season,  during  this  period 
of  transition,  he  does  not  belong  to  the  human  race. 
For  he  isn't  a  boy  any  longer ;  he  isn't  a  man ;  he 
certainly  isn't  a  woman  or  a  girl.  He  is  listed  with 
the  unclassified  fauna  of  this  planet.  He  is  a  little 
too  tall  for  knickerbockers,  and  not  quite  old  enough 
44 


THE  RISE  AND  FALL  OF  THE  MUSTACHE 

for  long  trousers.  He  is  as  awkward  as  he  can  be, 
before  death.  Whatever  he  picks  up  he  drops  and 
breaks.  Whatever  is  too  heavy  for  him  to  lift  he 
steps  on  and  breaks.  And  whatever  is  too  big  for 
him  to  step  on  he  runs  into  and  breaks. 

And  his  voice  is  changing.  You  hear  him  in  an 
adjoining  room,  singing,  all  by  himself,  a  sad  sweet 
song.  And  you  anxiously  call  out,  "What  are  you 
boys  quarreling  about,  in  there?"  Sounds  like  half  a 
dozen  of  him  in  a  scrap.  This  is  a  boy's  exclusive 
experience.  Women  know  nothing  about  it.  The 
boy's  sister  never  passes  through  these  bitter  wa- 
ters. From  babyhood  to  womanhood  she  is  gracious, 
and  graceful,  and  dear.  Even  when  she  is  a  laugh- 
ing happy  girl  of  twelve,  with  no  more  shape  than  a 
bolster,  we  say  she  is  as  sweet  as  she  ever  will  be. 
No,  indeed.  She  will  grow  lovelier  and  sweeter, 
more  lovable  and  more — er — huggable,  so  to  speak, 
for  many  years  after  that. 

And:     His  mother  never  cuts  his  hair  again. 

Never.    When  Tom  assumes  the  manly  gown,  she 

has  looked  her  last  upon  his  head,  with  trimming 

ideas.     His  hair  will  be  trimmed  and  clipped,  bar- 

45 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

•berously  it  may  be,  but  she  will  not  be  acscissory 
before  the  fact.  She  may  sometimes  long  to  have 
her  boy  kneel  down  before  her,  while  she  gnaws 
around  his  terrified  locks  with  a  pair  of  scissors  that 
were  sharpened  when  they  were  made;  and  have 
since  then  cut  acres  of  calico,  and  miles  of  paper, 
and  great  stretches  of  cloth,  and  snarls  and  coils  of 
string,  and  furlongs  of  lamp-wick;  and  have  snuffed 
candles ;  and  dug  refractory  corks  out  of  the  family 
"ink-bottle" ;  and  punched  holes  in  skate  straps ;  and 
trimmed  the  family  nails;  and  have  done  their  level 
best,  at  the  annual  struggle,  to  cut  stovepipe  lengths 
in  two;  and  have  successfully  opened  oyster  and 
fruit  cans ;  and  pried  up  carpet  tacks ;  and  have  many 
a  time  gone  snarling  around  Tom's  head,  and  made 
him  an  object  of  terror  to  the  children  in  the  street, 
looking  so  much  like  a  yearling  colt  that  people  have 
been  afraid  to  approach  him  too  suddenly,  lest  he 
should  jump  through  his  collar  and  run  away. 
5  He  feels,  too,  the  consciousness  of  another  grand 
truth  in  the  human  economy.  It  dawns  upon  his  in- 
telligence that  man's  upper  lip  was  designed  by 
nature  for  a  mustache  pasture.  How  tenderly  re- 
46 


THE  RISE  AND  FALL  OF  THE  MUSTACHE 

served  he  is  when  he  is  brooding  over  this  discovery ! 
With  what  exquisite  caution  are  his  primal  investi- 
gations conducted.  In  his  microscopical  researches 
it  appears  to  him  that  the  down  on  his  upper  lip  is 
certainly  more  determined  down,  more  positive, 
more  pronounced,  more  individual  fuzz  than  that 
which  vegetates  in  neglected  tenderness  upon  his 
cheeks.  He  makes  cautious  explorations  along  the 
land  of  promise  with  the  tip  of  his  tenderest  finger, 
delicately  backing  up  the  grade  the  wrong  way,  go- 
ing always  against  the  grain,  that  he  may  the  more 
readily  detect  the  slightest  symptom  of  an  uprising 
by  the  first  feeling  of  velvety  resistance. 

And  day  by  day  he  is  more  and  more  firmly  con- 
vinced that  there  is  in  his  lip  the  protoplasm  of  a 
glory  that  will,  in  its  full  development,  eclipse  even 
the  majesty  of  his  first  tail-coat.  And  in  the  first 
dawning  consciousness  that  the  mustache  is  there, 
like  the  vote,  and  only  needs  to  be  brought  out,  how 
often  Tom  walks  down  to  the  barber  shop,  gazes 
longingly  in  at  the  window,  and  walks  past.  And 
how  often,  when  he  musters  up  sufficient  courage  to 
go  in,  and  climbs  into  the  chair,  and  is  just  on  the 
47 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

point  of  huskily  whispering  to  the  barber  that  he 
would  like  a  shave,  the  entrance  of  a  man  with  a 
beard  like  Frederick  Barbarossa's  frightens  away  his 
resolution,  and  he  has  his  hair  cut  again — the  third 
time  that  week,  and  his  hair  is  so  short  the  barber  has 
to  part  it  with  a  straight-edge,  and  a  scratch-awl. 
After  that,  he  determines  to  shave  himself,  and  sur- 
reptitiously obtains  possession  of  the  ancestral  shav- 
ing machinery.  His  first  shave  is  followed  by  a  pa- 
ternal investigation  to  discover  "Who  has  been 
sharpening  lead-pencils  or  opening  sardine  cans  with 
my  razor?"  Nobody  ever  knows. 

All  that  we  know  about  it  is,  that  Tom  holds  the 
razor  in  his  hand  about  a  minute,  wondering  what 
to  do  with  it,  before  the  blade  falls  across  his  fingers 
and  cuts  every  one  of  them.  First  blood  claimed 
and  allowed,  for  the  razor.  Then  he  straps  the 
razor  furiously.  Or,  rather,  he  razors  the  strap. 
He  slashes  that  passive  instrument  in  as  many  direc- 
tions as  he  can  make  motions  with  the  razor.  He 
would  cut  it  oftener  if  the  strap  lasted  longer.  Then 
he  nicks  the  razor  against  the  side  of  the  mug. 
Then  he  drops  it  on  the  floor  and  steps  on  it  and 
48 


THE  RISE  AND  FALL  OF  THE  MUSTACHE 

nicks  it  again.  They  are  small  nicks,  not  so  large 
by  half  as  a  saw-tooth,  and  he  flatters  himself  his 
father  will  never  see  them.  Next  he  soaks  the  razor 
in  hot  water,  as  he  has  seen  his  father  do.  Then  he 
takes  it  out,  at  a  temperature  anywhere  under  nine 
hundred  eighty  degrees  Fahrenheit,  and  lays  it 
against  his  cheek,  and  raises  a  blister  there  the  size 
of  the  razor,  as  he  never  saw  his  father  do,  but  as  his 
father  most  assuredly  did,  many,  many  years  before 
Tom  met  him.  Then  he  makes  a  variety  of  inde- 
scribable grimaces  and  labial  contortions  in  a  fren- 
zied effort  to  get  his  upper  lip  into  approachable 
shape,  and,  at  last,  the  first  offer  he  makes  at  his  em- 
bryo mustache,  he  slashes  his  nose  with  a  vicious 
uppercut  He  gashes  the  cprners  of  his  mouth; 
wherever  those  nicks  touch  his  cheek  they  leave  a 
scratch  apiece,  and  he  learns  what  a  good  nick  in  a 
razor  is  for.  When  at  last  he  lays  the  blood-stained 
weapon  down,  his  gory  lip  looks  as  though  it  has 
just  come  out  of  a  stubborn  contest  with  a  straw- 
cutter. 

But  he  learns  to  shave,  after  a  while — just  before 
he  cuts  his  lip  clear  off. 

49 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

Tom  is  a  big  boy  now.  He  is  introduced,  by 
young  people  of  his  own  age,  as  "Mister".  He 
scoffs  at  it,  and  likes  it,  not  foreseeing  the  distant 
years  when  he  will  be  heart-hungry  for  his  old 
school  nickname.  He  receives  an  invitation  to  a 
"party".  He  goes.  He  goes  early.  He  runs  nearly 
all  the  way  for  fear  he  may  be  "late  to  the  party". 
Family  isn't  dressed  when  he  gets  there. 
j-  When  he  is  ushered  into  the  drawing-room  there 
is  nobdy  there  but  chairs ;  all  the  chairs  in  the  house, 
it  seems  to  him.  He  is  alone,  and  he  can  pick  out 
the  best  and  most  comfortable  one  there,  and  sit  in 
it  all  the  evening.  Instead  of  which,  he  picks  out 
the  meanest  chair  that  was  ever  designed,  an  odd 
hall  chair  that  got  in  by  mistake;  one  of  these  things 
with  a  haircloth  cushion  that  a  fly  couldn't  cling  to, 
and  a  back  that  is  so  straight  it  leans  forward  a 
little  bit,  and  a  big  carved  ornament  in  the  middle  of 
it  that  catches  you  right  in  the  shoulder-blades. 
Then  he  braces  his  feet  against  the  carpet  and  by 
some  miracle  manages  to  stay  in  that  chair.  After 
he  gets  in  it  money  couldn't  hire  him  to  move.  By 
and  by  the  guests  begin  to  arrive.  He  wants  people 
50 


THE  RISE  AND  FALL  OF  THE  MUSTACHE 

to  understand  he  is  accustomed  to  these  little  social 
functions,  and  knows  what  to  do  with  himself. 

In  order  to  look  easy  and  unconscious,  he  piles  one 
hand  on  top  of  the  other.  It  doesn't  fit,  so  he  piles 
the  other  one  on  top.  That  fits  worse  than  it  did 
before,  so  he  keeps  trying  on  his  hands,  one  after 
another.  He  wonders  why  hands  didn't  come  in 
pairs  instead  of  triplets.  He  could  get  along  all 
right  if  it  wasn't  for  the  third  hand.  In  course  of 
time  some  lady  comes  along,  as  the  crowd  gets 
denser,  and  offers  him  a  nice  plate.  He  says,  "No, 
thanks;  no  plate."  She  doesn't  pay  any  attention  to 
what  he  says.  She  puts  the  plate  on  his  lap.  He 
says  to  himself,  "All  right.  If  it  stays  on,  all  right; 
if  it  slips  off  on  the  floor,  all  right."  He  didn't  ask 
for  the  old  thing,  and  he  isn't  going  to  feel  responsi- 
ble for  broken  china  in  that  house.  Another  lady 
comes  along  with  a  napkin  and  a  tea-Cup  and  saucer. 
Others  bring  rations  of  cake  and  pile  them  on  the 
boy's  plate. 

You  know  the  kind  of  place  it  is.  You  have 
suffered  at  it.  One  of  those  places  where  they 
pass  refreshments  around  the  room.  Oh,  woman! 
51 


OLD  TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

That  is  no  kind  of  a  way  to  feed  a  grown 
man.  Nature  never  designed  man  for  that  kind  of 
a  picnicking  animal,  anyhow.  If  she  had,  she 
would  have  built  him  that  way.  She  would  have 
made  his  knees  broad  and  flat,  like  a  beaver's  tail. 
Then  you  would  have  a  lap  you  could  hold  some- 
thing on  besides  a  ninety-pound  girl.  And  even  she 
won't  stay  on  unless  she  is  held.  So  I  have  been 
told.  They  give  you  a  tiny  plate,  with  cake  and 
wafers  on  it,  and  a  toy  cup  and  saucer,  and  two 
lumps  of  sugar,  and  a  doll's  spoon,  which  you  know 
will  fall  off  by  and  by — and  it  does.  There  you 
stand — no  place  to  sit  down,  and  you  are  tired  after 
your  long  day's  work. 

.  Ypu  can't  let  go  of  your  tea-cup  to  eat  your  cake, 
and  you  can't  let  go  of  the  cake  to  drink  your  tea. 
So  you  hold  them  there  for  fifteen  minutes;  then 
some  kind-hearted  woman  says,  "Sha'n't  I  relieve 
you?"  and  takes  them  away  from  you.  And  you 
wonder  why  they  gave  them  to  you.  You  can't  hear 
a  word  that  is  said.  Every  time  anybody  comes 
along  and  asks,  "Are  you  enjoying  the  evening?" — 
you  say,  in  a  dying  tone,  you  are  having  a  "very  nice 
52 


THE  RISE  AND  FALL  OF  THE  MUSTACHE 

time."  You  don't  remember  when  you  had  such  a 
good  time,  except  in  the  dentist's  chair.  And  you 
look  it. 

Now,  the  boy  hasn't  enough  nerve  to  decline  any- 
thing, so  they  pile  the  cake  high  on  his  plate.  All 
kinds  of  cake:  loaf  cake;  soft  squashy  cake;  layer 
cake.  Layer  cake !  You  take  up  a  piece  of  it,  and 
the  roof  comes  off.  Then  you  don't  know  whether 
you  are  expected  to  eat  the  "floor"  or  not.  And 
there  is  one  kind  of  cake — I  don't  know  the  name  of 
it.  I  never  heard  it  called  any  names,  except  by 
unhappy  men  who  had  eaten  fragments  of  it  under 
compulsion.  It  has  this  peculiar,  soft,  gaumy, 
sticky,  fly-paper-like  icing  all  over  it.  I  don't  know 
what  you  call  it,  but  after  you  have  eaten  a  piece 
you  feel  as  though  you  had  been  fooling  with  the 
mucilage  bottle.  Ordinarily  you  are  not  a  very  con- 
ceited man,  but  that  night  you  are  "dead  stuck  on 
yourself". 

Now,  the  boy  doesn't  want  to  eat  anything,  but 

he  thinks  Society  expects  it  of  him,  and  he  eats 

patiently  down  to  the  bottom ;  and  by  and  by  he  gets 

down  to  the  wafers — wafers,  you  know,  about  as 

53 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

thick  as  window-glass,  not  quite  so  nutritious,  and 
with  just  about  as  much  taste  in  them.  I  don't 
know  what  the  women  make  them  for,  except  to 
serve  at  these  little  gatherings.  Well,  the  boy  gets 
down  to  the  wafers.  Up  to  this  time  you  haven't 
paid  the  slightest  attention  to  him.  But  just  when 
he  is  loaded  to  the  muzzle  with  these  dry,  crumby, 
dusty,  brittle  things,  you  stand  before  him  and  ask 
him  if  he  is  "enjoying  the  evening."  Poor  boy,  he 
feels  he  must  answer  you  right  away,  promptly ;  he 
blows  a  perfect  geyser  of  crumbs  half-way  across 
the  room;  then  he  gives  one  shuddering  gasp  and 
chokes  all  the  rest  of  the  evening. 

But  he  is  young,  he  has  a  good  constitution, 
and  he  is  strong;  he  lives  through  it,  and  goes 
home  alone.  Didn't  intend  to  go  home  alone 
when  he  went  there — oh,  no,  indeed !  He  had  an- 
other schedule.  But  when  he  reaches  the  end  of 
the  evening  he  feels  faint  and  weak  and  cowardly. 
He  sneaks  out  of  the  house  without  being  observed, 
escapes  and  gets  home  unpursued.  He  doesn't  even 
pause  to  tell  his  hostess,  as  his  mother  told  him 
to  be  sure  to  do,  that  he  has  had  "such  a  delight- 
54 


THE  RISE  AND  FALL  OF  THE  MUSTACHE 

ful  evening,"  and  he  hopes  he  may  be  permitted 
to  come  again.  But  he  feels  better  as  he  thinks 
it  all  over  at  home.  He  did  have  a  good  time.  Al- 
ternately wretched  and  miserable  and  happy,  dis- 
contented, humiliated,  overjoyed  he  was  all  evening 
— but  he  liked  it.  He  goes  back  to  that  house  once, 
and  again,  and  again,  and  yet  again.  Not  for  more 
cake — oh,  no,  he  has  had  all  the  cake  he  wants. 

He  has  discovered  another  kind  of  confectionery 
at  that  house,  which  is  sweeter  also  than  the  honey- 
comb. Her  name  is  Laura,  or  Helen,  or  something 
like  that.  And  he  goes  to  her  home  with  two  or  three 
fellows;  goes  with  half  a  dozen  people;  and  at  last 
he  goes  all  by  himself.  After  the  most  elaborate 
grooming  he  ever  gave  himself,  he  feels  that  he  is 
dressed  like  a  tramp.  He  has  a  half-defined  impres- 
sion that  everything  he  has  on  is  a  size  too  small  for 
any  other  man  of  his  size ;  that  his  boots  are  a  trifle 
snug,  like  a  house  with  four  rooms  for  a  family  of 
thirty-seven;  that  the  hat  which  sits  so  lightly  on 
the  crown  of  his  head  is  jaunty  but  limited,  like  a 
junior  clerk's  salary;  that  his  gloves  are  a  neat  fit, 
and  can't  be  buttoned  with  a  stump  machine.  Tom 
55 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG  TOM 

doesn't  know  all  this :  lie  has  only  a  general  vague 
impression  that  it  may  be  so.  And  he  doesn't  know 
that  his  sisters  know  every  line  of  it.  For  he  has 
lived  many  years  longer,  and  got  in  ever  so  much 
more  trouble,  before  he  learns  that  one  bright,  good, 
sensible  girl — and  I  believe  they  are  all  that — will 
see  and  notice  more  in  a  glance,  remember  it  more 
accurately,  and  talk  more  about  it,  than  twenty  men 
can  see  in  a  week. 

Tom  does  not  know,  for  his  crying  feet  will  not 
let  him,  how  he  gets  from  his  room  to  the  earthly 
paradise  where  Laura  lives.  Nor  does  he  know, 
after  he  gets  there,  that  Laura  sees  him  trying  to  rest 
one  foot  by  setting  it  up  on  the  heel.  And  she  sees 
him  sneak  it  back  under  his  chair,  and  tilt  it  up  on 
the  toe  for  a  change.  She  sees  him  fidget  and  fuss, 
she  sees  the  look  of  anguish  flitting  across  his  face 
under  the  heartless  deceitful  veneering  of  smiles,  and 
she  makes  the  mental  remark  that  Master  Tom 
would  feel  much  happier,  and  much  more  comforta- 
ble, and  more  like  staying  longer,  if  he  had  worn  his 
fathers's  boots. 

But  on  his  way  to  the  house,  despite  the  distrac- 
56 


THE  RISE  AND  FALL  OF  THE  MUSTACHE 

tion  of  his  crying  feet,  how  many  pleasant,  really 
beautiful,  romantic  things  Tom  thinks  up  and  recol- 
lects and  compiles  and  composes  to  say  to  Laura,  to 
impress  her  with  his  originality  and  wisdom  and 
genius  and  bright  exuberant  fancy  and  general  su- 
periority over  all  the  rest  of  Tom-kind.  Real  earnest 
things,  you  know;  no  hollow  conventional  compli- 
ments, or  nonsense,  but  such  things,  Tom  flatters 
himself,  as  none  of  the  other  fellows  can  or  will  say. 
And  he  has  them  all  in  beautiful  order  when  he  gets 
to  the  foot  of  the  hill.  The  remark  about  the 
weather,  to  begin  with;  not  the  stereotyped  old 
phrase,  but  a  quaint,  droll,  humorous  conceit  that  no 
one  in  the  world  but  Tom  could  think  of.  Then, 
after  the  opening  overture  about  the  weather,  some- 
thing about  music,  and  then  something  about  art, 
and  a  profound  thought  or  two  on  science  and  phi- 
losophy, and  so  on  to  poetry,  and  from  poetry  on  an 
easy  grade  to  "business". 

But  alas,  when  Tom  reaches  the  gate,  all  these 

well-ordered    ideas    display    evident    symptoms    of 

breaking  up ;  as  he  crosses  the  yard,  he  is  dismayed 

to  know  that  they  are  in  the  convulsions  of  a  panic, 

57 


OLD   TIME   AND    YOUNG   TOM 

and  when  he  touches  the  bell  button  every,  each,  all 
and  several  of  the  ideas,  original  and  compiled,  that 
he  has  had  on  any  subject  during  the  last  ten  years 
forsake  him  and  return  no  more  that  evening. 

When  Laura  welcomed  him  at  the  door,  he  had 
intended  to  say  something  real  splendid  about  the 
imprisoned  sunlight  of  something  beaming  out  a 
welcome  upon  the  what-you-may-call-it  of  the  night 
or  something.  Instead  of  which  he  says,  or  rather 
gasps: 

"Oh,  yes,  to  be  sure ;  to  be  sure ;  ho." 
And  then,  conscious  that  he  has  not  said  anything 
particularly  brilliant  or  original,  or  that  most  any  of 
the  other  fellows  could  not  say  with  a  little  practise, 
he  adds,  "Good  morning!"  And  even  this  seems 
out  of  place  at  eight  thirty  P.  M.  Then  he  pulls  him- 
self together  and  asks,  "How  is  your  mother?"  He 
is  informed  of  "Ma's"  well-being,  and  feeling  that  he 
has  struck  a  conversational  lead,  he  follows  it  a  little 
deeper.  "How  is  your  father?"  He  is  not  greatly 
reassured  by  the  information  that  "Pa  is  around  and 
kicking."  But  he  prospects  a  little  further  and  asks, 
"How  are  your  parents?"  And  then  he  finds  that 
58 


THE  RISE  AND  FALL  OF  THE  MUSTACHE 

his  lead  was  pnly  a  pocket,  and  that  he  has  already 
exhausted  his  first  topic  of  conversation. 

He  gets  through  the  evening,  though  he  never 
knows  how.  He  hears  his  own  voice,  sounding  far 
away.  He  sees  Laura's  face  as  in  a  mist,  when  he 
dares  look  at  it.  She  says  something  about  litera- 
ture and  he  says  he  is  reading  "John  Stuart  Mill  on 
the  Floss."  "Does  he  like  it?"  No,  he  doesn't  read 
things  he  likes;  he  reads  to  feed  his  mind.  "And 
does  his  mind  require  a  great  deal  of  feeding?" 
Then  he  wonders  if  she  is  laughing  at  him.  By  and 
by,  sometime  the  same  night,  he  looks  at  his  watch 
again,  and  says  it  is  time  for  him  to  go.  But  he 
doesn't  go.  He  merely  admits  that  it  is  time.  Sits 
still  for  a  long,  long  time  after  that.  Doesn't  say 
much,  but  thinks  a  great  deal.  After  a  while  he 
says,  "Well,  really,  I  ought  to  go." 

Now,  that  is  encouraging.  He  ought  to  go.  It 
shows  the  young  man  is  thinking  seriously  upon  the 
subject  of  going.  His  conscience  is  working  on  him 
— he  "ought  to  go" ;  he  is  a  young  man  of  principle ; 
when  he  feels  he  ought  to  do  a  thing,  he  is  not  the 
kind  of  man  to  shirk  his  duty,  and  as  he  "ought"  to 
59 


OLD   TIME   AND    YOUNG   TOM 

go,  why,  by  and  by  he  goes.  He  doesn't  rush  out  of 
the  house  violently,  like  a  man  going  to  a  fire,  upset- 
ting the  furniture  and  scaring  the  cat.  No,  he  walks 
across  the  room,  and  down  the  hall,  with  the  slow, 
steady,  deliberate,  meditative,  lingering  tread  of  a 
man  working  by  the  day — for  the  city.  When  he 
gets  out  into  the  hall  he  runs  into  the  hat-rack.  He 
seems  surprised  to  find  there  is  a  hat-rack  there.  He 
contemplates  it  for  a  long,  long  time.  He  says  after 
a  while,  "Really,  now,  I  must  go."  When  you  must 
do  anything  you  do  it. 

He  goes  at  last.  Goes  as  far  as  the  door  this 
time,  and  gets  hold  of  the  door-knob — clutches 
it,  as  a  drowning  man  grasps  a  life-line.  Seems 
astonished  to  find  there  is  a  knob  on  the  door 
— had  never  noticed  one  there  before.  He  clings 
to  it  as  though  he  had  determined  if  any  bur- 
glar came  down  the  street  and  tried  to  steal  that 
door-knob,  he  would  have  to  drag  his  dead  body 
through  the  key-hole  before  he  got  away  with  it. 
By  and  by  he  opens  the  door  as  wide  as  it  will  go. 
He  would  open  it  wider,  but  the  wall  is  in  his  way. 
He  holds  it  open  there  in  the  middle  of  December, 
60 


THE  RISE  AND  FALL  OF  THE  MUSTACHE 

as  though  his  one  great  ambition  in  life  was  to  cool 
off  that  house  before  he  died.  He  cools  it  off ;  and 
the  family  is  shivering  to  death  in  bed,  when  he 
finally  manages  to  say  a  plain  "Good  night,"  such  as 
you  and  I  would  say,  whereas  he  intended  to  say  a 
very  sentimental,  poetical  good  night.  And  as  he 
goes  down  the  steps  he  hears  the  door  close  behind 
him ;  he  hears  the  key  turn  in  the  lock ;  he  hears  the 
chain  shot  into  place,  and  he  looks  around  to  see 
what  is  the  cause  of  all  this  haste,  and  the  last  light 
in  the  house  has  gloomed  into  darkness. 

He  has  been  there  only  five  or  six  hours,  and  that 
was  his  first  formal  call.  What  he  will  do  when  he 
gets  more  familiar  with  the  family  and  feels  a  little 
more  at  home  nobody  can  guess.  On  his  way  home 
he  feels  what  an  utter  fool  he  made  of  himself. 
Laura  is  not  for  him,  and  he  will  never  think  of  her 
again.  So  he  thinks  of  her  all  night.  He  thinks  he 
was  the  awfulest  ass  that  ever  tried  to  entertain 
anybody.  That  girl  will  never  want  to  see  him 
again,  never  want  to  hear  the  dreary  sound  of  his 
stupid  voice — never ;  and  he  never  will  go  back  there 
again — never — never — never. 
61 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

He  goes  back  the  next  night.  And  many  other 
nights.  Until  at  last  there  comes  the  night  of  a 
thousand  nights.  When  a  kindly  Providence  keeps 
everybody  else  out  of  the  way.  When  there  is 
nobody  there  but  Tom  and  Laura,  and  the  furni- 
ture, and  a  lamp  that  turns  down,  and  the  star- 
light looking  in  through  the  half-curtained  win- 
dows. When,  without  knowing  how  or  why,  they 
talk  about  life  and  its  realities  instead  of  the  last 
concert  or  the  next  lecture;  when  they  talk  of  their 
plans,  their  day-dreams  and  aspirations,  and  their 
ideals  of  real  men  and  women ;  they  talk  about 
the  heroes  and  heroines  of  days  long  gone  by,  gray 
and  dim  in  the  ages  that  are  ever  made  young  and 
new  by  the  lives  of  noble  men  and  noble  women  who 
never  died  in  those  grand  old  days,  but  lived  and 
live  on,  as  fadeless  as  the  stars.  When  the  room 
seems  strangely  silent  if  for  a  moment  their  voices 
hush;  when  the  flush  of  earnestness  upon  her  face 
gives  it  a  tinge  of  sadness  that  makes  it  more  beau- 
tiful than  ever;  when  the  dream  of  a  home  Eden, 
and  home  life,  and  home  love,  and  a  home-goddess 
with  a  face  like  Laura's,  grows  every  moment  more 
62 


THE  RISE  AND  FALL  OF  THE  MUSTACHE 

lovely,  more  entrancing  to  him,  until  at  last  poor, 
blundering,  stupid  Tom  speaks  without  knowing 
what  he  is  going  to  say,  speaks  without  preparation 
or  rehearsal,  just  speaks,  and  his  honest  manly 
heart  touches  his  faltering  lips  with  eloquence  and 
tenderness  and  earnestness,  that  all  the  rhetoric  in 
the  world  never  did  and  never  will  inspire;  and — 
That  is  all  we  know  about  it.  Nobody  knows  what 
he  says,  or  how  he  says  it. 

And  when  he  goes  away  from  her  home  that 
night,  with  the  answer  in  his  heart  he  had  hoped 
and  prayed  for,  although  he  knew  he  didn't  deserve 
it,  he  goes  out  into  that  wondrous  night  a  new 
man,  into  a  new  world.  There  are  constella- 
tions in  the  sky  he  never  saw  before.  It  is  a 
new  world,  and  he  is  a  new  man,  with  new  hopes 
and  new  aspirations,  new  ambitions  and  new  pur- 
poses. His  whole  life  is  transformed  by  a  woman's 
love.  No  wonder  he  walks  home  on  the  air,  about 
ten  feet  up  above  the  earth,  which  is  the  planet  we 
inhabit,  by  permission  of  the  trusts.  Tom  abides  in 
this  altitudinous  condition  of  things  for  several 
days.  He  doesn't  come  down  for  his  meals.  Meals ! 
63 


OLD   TIME   AND    YOUNG   TOM 

"Victuals!"  Air  is  rich  enough  for  his  blood.  A 
little  atmosphere  on  a  crystal  salver  is  all  he  wants, 
three  times  a  day.  He  lives  on  the  essence  of  her 
name  breathed  into  a  "vawse". 

But  Laura  brings  him  down  to  earth  one  evening 
when  they  are  sitting  down  together,  brings  him 
down  with  a  thud.  She  wants  to  know  if  he  has 
said  anything  about  this,  by  the  way,  to  "Pa".  Pa ! 
Tom  had  forgotten  there  was  such  a  creature  on 
earth  as  Pa.  It  hasn't  occurred  to  him  that  Pa  had 
any  connection  with  this  circus  at  all.  Now,  he  un- 
derstands that  Pa  is  the  gentleman  in  the  middle  of 
the  ring,  with  the  long  whip.  He  is  the  ring-master, 
who  makes  the  animals  and  the  performers  go 
around.  No,  he  hadn't  said  anything  to  Pa.  He 
says  he  didn't  think  of  it — he  hasn't  had  time;  he 
hasn't  seen  him;  they  were  taking  account  of  stock 
this  week.  No,  he  hasn't  yet,  but  he  will  some  time. 
There  was  no  hurry  about  it — the  old  gentleman 
would  last,  wouldn't  he,  a  few  weeks  longer? 

Tom  had  not  exactly,  as  you  might  say,  poured  out 
his  heart  to  Pa.  Somehow  or  other  he  had  a  rose- 
colored  idea  that  the  thing  was  going  to  go  right 
64 


THE  RISE  AND  FALL  OF  THE  MUSTACHE 

along  in  this  way  forever.  Tom  had  a  thought  that 
the  program  was  all  arranged,  printed  and  distrib- 
uted, rose-colored,  gilt-edged  and  perfumed.  He 
was  going  to  sit  and  hold  Laura's  hands,  and  Pa  was 
to  stay  down  at  the  office,  and  Ma  was  to  make  her 
visits  like  angels'.  But  he  sees,  now  that  the  matter 
has  been  referred  to,  that  Pa  is  a  grim  necessity. 
And  Laura  doesn't  like  to  see  such  a  spasm  of  terror 
pass  over  Tom's  face ;  and  her  lips  quiver  a  little  as 
she  hides  her  flushed  face  out  of  sight  on  Tom's 
shoulder,  and  tells  him  how  kind  and  tender  Pa  has 
always  been  with  her,  until  Tom  feels  positively 
jealous  of  him.  And  she  tells  him  that  he  must  not 
dread  going  to  see  Pa,  for  Pa  will  be,  oh,  so  glad  to 
know  how  happy,  happy,  happy  he  can  make  Pa's 
little  girl.  And  as  she  talks  of  him — the  hard-work- 
ing, old-fashioned  man,  who  loves  his  girls  as 
though  he  were  yet  only  a  big  boy — her  heart  grows 
tenderer,  and  she  speaks  so  eloquently  that  Tom,  at 
first  savagely  jealous  of  him,  is  persuaded  to  fall  in 
love  with  the  old  gentleman — he  calls  him  "Pa",  too. 
"Why,"  he  says,  "I'm  not  afraid  of  your  father. 
For  that  matter,  I'm  not  afraid  of  any  man  that  ever 
65 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

walked  on  buffalo-grass.  I  will  go  and  see  him 
now  if  you  want  me  to."  No,  not  right  now;  she 
thinks  it  isn't  necessary  right  now,  but  sometime 
soon.  He  will  go  down  to-morrow  afternoon — and 
he  does. 

He  commits  to  memory  a  beautiful  speech,  an 
impressive,  persuasive,  convincing  speech.  He  walks 
right  down  to  the  private  office  at  the  end  of 
the  store  where  it  says  "No  Admittance"  on  the 
glass  door.  He  opens  the  door  and  walks  right  up 
to  the  old  man  sitting  at  the  desk,  and  looks  him 
right  in  the  eye,  bold  as  a  sheep.  The  old  gentleman 
lifts  his  head  and  looks  Tom  in  the  eye.  Once.  Just 
once.  That  is  enough.  Tom  takes  the  count  after 
that.  He  wasn't  sure  whether  the  old  man  looked 
him  in  the  eye  or  poked  him  in  the  eye.  It  has  the 
same  effect  on  him;  it  knocks  his  speech  endwise. 

By  and  by  he  starts  in  the  middle  of  a  sentence  and 
says  it  both  ways,  leaves  out  all  the  verbs  and  for- 
gets all  the  substantives.  But  he  gets  through  alive, 
and  he  tells  Laura  that  night — oh,  he  says,  if  she 
could  only  have  heard  what  he  said  to  her  father! 
He  walked  right  up  to  him,  and  he  wishes  he  could 
66 


THE  RISE  AND  FALL  OF  THE  MUSTACHE 

remember  the  speech  he  made.  If  Daniel  Webster 
could  have  heard  that  speech  he  would  have  turned 
over  in  his  grave.  Likely  he  would — he  would  have 
come  out  of  it  with  a  brick.  Only  one  man  on  earth 
could  have  understood  what  the  boy  was  trying  to 
say,  and  that  happened  to  be  the  man  he  was  talking 
to,  and  he  understood  him  because  he  knew  all  the 
symptoms.  He  had  been  there  himself,  and  a  man 
never  gets  over  it.  But  when  you  come  to  this  crisis 
in  your  life,  my  son,  don't  you  make  up  any  speech 
for  Pa.  You  wouldn't  remember  it  if  you  did.  Pa 
wouldn't  be  moved  by  it,  hard-headed,  solid,  matter- 
of-fact  man  of  business  that  he  is.  You  get  him 
alone  first — that  is  the  main  thing.  Tell  him  you 
would  like  to  see  him  alone  for  a  couple  of  minutes, 
if  he  has  an  hour  or  two  to  spare.  Then  he  will 
know  what  you  want  right  away. 

He  understands,  when  a  young  man  of  your  age 
comes  in  at  the  busiest  time  of  a  busy  day,  and  asks 
him  for  a  private  interview,  that  you  are  either  going 
to  ask  him  for  his  daughter  or  try  to  borrow  money 
of  him.  It  amounts  to  the  same  thing  in  the  end, 
So  he  will  be  ready  for  you  in  either  case.  Oh,  pf 
67 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

course,  if  there  are  two  or  three  sisters  in  the  family, 
if  I  were  you  I  would  mention  the  name  of  the  par- 
ticular girl  I  was  after.  Because,  if  you  leave  it  to 
Pa  to  select  the  member  of  his  family  that  he  thinks 
is  best  adapted  to  your  needs  and  age,  it  will  be  just 
like  him  to  offer  you  the  old  lady.  You  get  her  any- 
how, son ;  you  needn't  worry  about  that. 

Then  you  mustn't  hurry  the  old  man.  We  have 
an  idea  when  a  man  gets  about  fifty  years  old  that 
all  the  sentiment  in  his  heart  has  been  burned  to 
ashes  long  years  ago  in  the  struggle  for  life,  with 
the  fierce  competition  in  the  market,  and  the  contact 
with  other  keen  fighting  men.  But  sometimes, 
when  the  boy  and  the  man  stand  and  sit  there,  look- 
ing at  each  other,  the  counting-room,  with  the  heavy 
shadows  lurking  in  every  corner,  with  its  time-worn 
furnishings,  with  the  scanty  dash  of  sunlight  break- 
ing in  through  the  dusty  window,  looks  like  an  old 
painting;  the  beginning  and  finishing  of  a  race:  one 
man  nearly  ready  to  lay  his  armor  off,  glad  to  be  so 
nearly  and  so  safely  through  with  the  contest  that 
Tom,  in  all  his  inexperience  and  with  his  enthusiasm 
and  conceit  of  a  young  man,  is  just  getting  ready  to 
68 


THE  RISE  AND  FALL  OF  THE  MUSTACHE 

run  and  fight,  or  fight  and  run,  you  never  can  tell 
which  until  he  is  through  with  it. 

The  old  man,  looking  at  Tom,  and  through  him, 
and  past  him,  without  seeing  him,  feels  his  heart 
throb  almost  as  quickly  as  does  that  of  the  young 
man  before  him.  For,  looking  down  a  long  vista  of 
years  bordered  with  roseate  hopes  and  bright  dreams 
and  anticipations,  he  sees  a  tender  face,  radiant  with 
smiles  and  kindled  with  blushes ;  he  feels  a  soft  hand 
drop  into  his  own  with  its  timid  pressure ;  he  sees  the 
vision  open,  under  the  summer  stars,  down  mossy 
hillsides,  where  the  restless  breezes,  sighing  through 
the  rustling  leaves,  whisper  their  secret  to  the  noisy 
katydids ;  strolling  along  winding  paths,  deep  in  the 
bending  wild  grass,  down  in  the  aisles  of  the  dim 
old  woods;  loitering  where  the  meadow  brook 
sparkles  over  the  white  pebbles  or  murmurs  around 
the  great  flat  stepping-stones ;  lingering  on  the  foot- 
bridge, while  he  gazes  into  eyes  eloquent  and  tender 
in  their  silent  love-light ;  up  through  the  long  path- 
way of  years,  flecked  and  checkered  with  sunshine 
and  cloud,  with  storm  and  calm,  through  years  of 
struggle,  trial,  sorrow,  disappointment,  out  at  last 
69 


OLD  TIME  AND   YOUNG  TOM 

into  the  crowning  beauty  and  benison  of  hard-won 
and  well-deserved  success,  he  sees  now  this  second 
Laura,  re-imaging  in  all  her  girlish  grace  and  loveli- 
ness of  face  and  figure,  and  echoing,  in  the  music  of 
her  voice,  her  mother — just  as  her  mother  was,  back 
in  the  dear,  old,  sun-crowned  days,  "When  all  the 
days  were  made  of  gold,  and  all  the  nights  of  sil- 
ver," when  Laura's  mother  was  a  "little  girl,"  and 
Laura's  father  was  a  boy  like  Tom.  And  Pa,  brush- 
ing "nothing"  out  of  his  eyes,  tells  Tom  he'll  think 
it  over  and  see  him  again — oh,  well — about  nine 
o'clock  next  week. 

And  so  they  are  duly  and  formally  engaged ;  and 
the  very  first  thing  they  do,  they  make  the  very 
sensible,  though  very  uncommon  resolution  so  to 
conduct  themselves  that  no  one  will  ever  suspect  it. 
And  they  succeed  admirably.  No  one  ever  does 
suspect  it.  They  come  into  church  in  time  to  hear 
the  benediction — every  time  they  come  together. 
They  shun  all  other  people  when  church  is  dismissed, 
and  are  seen  to  go  home  alone  the  longest  way.  At 
picnics  they  are  missed  not  more  than  fifty  times  a 
day,  and  are  discovered  sitting  under  a  lone  and 
70 


THE  RISE  AND  FALL  OF  THE  MUSTACHE 

silent  tree,  holding  each  other's  hands,  gazing  into 
each  other's  eyes.  They  call  this  acting  coldly 
toward  each  other.  They  do  look  as  though  they 
were  trying  to  keep  each  other  from  freezing  to 
death. 

If,  at  sociable  or  festival,  they  are  left  alone 
in  a  dressing-room  a  second  and  a  half,  Laura 
emerges  with  her  ruffles  standing  around  like  a  rail- 
road accident;  and  Tom  has  enough  good  com- 
plexion on  his  shoulder  to  go  around  a  young  ladies' 
seminary.  When  they  drive  out,  they  sit  in  a  buggy 
with  a  seat  eighteen  inches  wide,  and  there  is  two 
feet  of  unoccupied  room  at  either  end  of  it.  Long 
years  afterward,  when  they  drive,  a  flat-car  isn't 
too  wide  for  them ;  and  when  they  walk,  you  could 
drive  a  load  of  hay  between  them. 

They  come  to  me,  sometimes,  these  light-hearted 
children,  and  say  they  are  "the  happiest  people  in 
all  this  world."  And  when  I  ask  why  this  super- 
lative felicity,  they  say  they  have  been  engaged  for 
six  week's.  Oh,  well ;  they  are  happy,  are  as  happy 
as  children  and  birds  and  kittens  know  how  to  be. 
They  have  all  the  happiness  they  will  hold,  but  they 


OLD   TIME   AND    YOUNG   TOM 

don't  hold  very  much.  Children  between  twenty  and 
thirty  have  a  very  limited  capacity  for  happiness. 
If  I  should  pick  out  the  happiest  lovers  I  know,  I 
wouldn't  select  the  boy  and  girl,  with  the  morning 
light  shining  on  their  faces,  or  the  starlight  gleaming 
in  their  eyes.  I  would  choose  your  white-haired  old 
grandfather,  and  your  grandmother  with  the  silver 
locks. 

Some  people  say,  "Oh,  Grandma  and  Grand- 
pa!— they  are  not  sentimental.  They  are  not  at 
all  lover-like.  They  are  as  matter-of-fact  as  the 
multiplication  table."  Yes,  but  don't  you  know 
these  gray-haired  old  lovers  can  teach  you  that 
love  is  a  rose  that  rarely  unfolds  to  its  perfection  in 
the  morning  sunshine?  It  takes  more  than  the 
laughing,  singing,  dancing  months  of  your  engage- 
ment to  teach  you  what  love  is.  It  takes  years  of 
deep  and  wide  life  experiences.  It  takes  years  to 
learn  and  to  understand  each  other's  little  infirmities 
of  temper  and  disposition ;  years  of  sharing  sorrow 
and  heartache,  as  well  as  laughter  and  joy;  years  of 
bearing  each  other's  burdens,  years  of  life's  woes 
and  life's  work,  it  takes  to  interweave  two  hearts  so 
72 


THE  RISE  AND  FALL  OF  THE  MUSTACHE 

closely  that  every  throb  in  one  awakens  an  answer- 
ing thought  in  the  other.  Love  that  has  -been  tried 
by  the  wet  fleece  and  by  the  dry ;  love  that  has  been 
tested  a  thousand  times  in  a  thousand  ways,  and  has 
never  once  faltered  in  its  patience,  in  its  loyalty,  and 
its  devotion.  By  and  by,  lover  and  sweetheart,  you 
will  love  each  other  in  that  way — not  this  year,  nor 
the  next.  But  after  many  years,  this  blessing  will 
come. 

Then  dawns  the  wedding-day.  The  wedding- 
day!  Everybody  about  the  house  laughing,  happy 
and  bright — everybody  singing  and  chatting,  with 
one  exception.  Somebody  cries.  At  every  wed- 
ding you  ever  attended  in  your  life  somebody  cried. 
You  can  hear  her  all  through  the  ceremony — sniff, 
sniff,  sniff !  Sounds  like  somebody  trying  to  make  re- 
sponses to  the  service  with  a  cold  in  his  head.  And 
another  thing :  the  person  who  is  crying  at  the  wed- 
ding is  always  somebody  who  is  not  being  married. 
Every  time.  The  people  who  are  being  married  seem 
to  stand  it  bravely. 

Poor  Ma,  no  wonder  she  cries,  when  she  realizes 
what  it  means  to  her.  Ma,  with  the  thousand  and 
73 


...      OLD  TIME  AND   YOUNG  TOM 

one  anxieties  attendant  pn  the  great  event  in  her 
daughter's  life  hidden  away  under  her  dear  smiling 
face,  away  down  under  the  glistening  eyes,  deep  in 
the  loving  heart;  Ma,  hurrying  here  and  fluttering 
there,  in  the  intense  excitement  of  something  strange- 
ly made  up  of  happiness  and  grief,  of  apprehension 
and  hope ;  Ma,  with  her  sudden  disappearances  and 
flushed  reappearances,  indicating  struggles  and  tri- 
umphs in  the  turbulent  world  down-stairs;  Ma,  see- 
ing that  everything  is  going  right,  from  kitchen  to 
dressing-rooms ;  looking  after  everything  and  every- 
body, with  her  hands  and  heart  just  as  full  as  they 
will  hold,  and  more  voices  calling,  "Ma",  from  every 
room  in  the  house  than  you  would  think  one  hundred 
"Mas"  could  answer ;  Ma,  with  the  quivering  lip  and 
glistening  eyes,  who  has  to  be  cheerful,  and  lively, 
and  smiling;  because,  if,  as  she  thinks  of  the  dear- 
est and  best-loved  of  her  little  flock  going  away  from 
her  sheltering  arms  into  the  keeping  of  another  heart, 
she  lets  the  fear  and  sorrow  cloud  her  eyes  for  one 
moment,  she  hears  a  reproachful  whisper — ^"Oh-h, 
Ma !"  How  it  all  comes  back  to  Laura,  like  the  ten- 
der shadow  of  a  dream,  long  years  after  the  mother- 
74 


THE  RISE  AND  FALL  OF  THE  MUSTACHE 

love  that  shone  in  the  quiet  eyes  has  gone  out  in 
darkness  in  the  dear  old  home;  how  sweetly  the 
vision  comes  back  to  the  bride  when  she  is  a  mother ! 

And  Pa — dear  old  "Dad",  wandering  about  the 
house  as  though  he  were  lost  in  his  own  home; 
blundering  into  rooms  where  he  has  no  business,  and 
getting  himself  repelled  therefrom  with  hysterical 
shrieks  and  gigglings ;  Pa,  who  gets  tired  of  people 
who  laugh  and  chatter,  and  gets  away  from  them 
for  a  little  minute,  hiding  himself  in  an  empty  room, 
where  he  stands  at  the  window  by  himself,  and 
looks  out,  dreaming  of  his  little  girl  going  away  to- 
day out  of  the  old  home  into  the  new  one. 

Why,  only  yesterday  she  was  a  dimpled,  dainty, 
white-robed  baby  girl,  the  lily  blossom  that  brought 
the  first  music  of  baby  cooing  into  his  home ;  his  little 
baby  girl.  Then  a  little  girl  in  short  dresses,  with 
schoolgirl  troubles  and  schoolgirl  pleasures,  but  yet 
his  little  girl.  And  then  an  older  little  girl  still — his 
comrade  now,  and  companion — 'but  still  his  little 
girl.  He  feels  the  caressing  touch  of  her  white 
arms  about  his  neck,  he  hears  her  ringing  laugh,  he 
sees  again  the  romping  ways  he  loved  so  well — his 
75 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG  TOM 

little  girl.  Then  an  older  "little  girl",  out  of  school, 
and  into  society,  admired,  beloved,  and  at  last — 
But  this  is  as  far  as  he  cares  to  think.  Because, 
somehow,  his  father  heart  sees  in  the  flight  of  this, 
his  first-born,  by  and  by  the  flight  of  all  the  other 
fledglings  of  his  flock.  He  thinks,  when  they  all 
have  mated  and  flown  away,  how  empty  and  deso- 
late the  old  home  nest  will  seem.  He  thinks  how,  in 
the  years  to  come,  when  his  girls  shall  make  other 
homes  bright  and  beautiful  with  the  music  of  their 
voices  and  the  light  of  their  faces,  mother  will  sit 
sometimes  in  the  old  home,  beside  the  empty  cradle 
that  rocked  them  all,  tenderly  singing  once  more, 
with  quivering  lips  and  faltering  voice,  the  cradle 
songs  that  in  the  olden  days  brooded  so  tenderly 
over  all  their  baby  sleep,  until  at  last  the  rising  tears 
will  choke  the  song,  and  the  swaying  cradle  will 
stand  still,  silent  and  empty,  and  back  over  river  and 
prairie,  mountain  and  desert,  from  new  homes  in  the 
newer  lands,  come  drifting  back  into  the  old  home 
and  its  silence  the  tender  cadences  of  the  songs  the 
children  used  to  sing  at  home.  Come  back  again  the 
murmured  prayers  from  the  whispering  lips,  rising 
76 


THE  RISE  AND  FALL  OF  THE  MUSTACHE 

like  the  incense  of  the  evening  sacrifice  around  the 
dear  loving  altar  of  the  mother  knees.  Come  back 
the  snatches  of  their  childish  plays.  Come  back  all 
the  love  and  the  beauty  of  their  childhood,  until  the 
old  home,  bereft  of  its  little  ones,  is  blessed  so  ten- 
derly with  their  memories. 

Old  and  gray  the  absent  children  may  be  now, 
with  other  children  clustering  like  olive  plants  about 
their  knees,  but  to  the  mother  love  that  goes  out  into 
the  world  with  every  one  of  us,  they  are  "the  chil- 
dren" still.  Down  to  white-haired  old  age,  in  her 
letters  to  them,  in  her  talk  about  them,  in  her  prayers 
for  them,  on  her  loving  lips  and  deep  in  her  tender 
heart,  they  are  her  "boys"  and  her  "girls". 

We  thank  God  it  is  so.  We  thank  God  for  the 
human  love  that  is  so  like  the  love  divine,  that  when 
the  great  All- father  would  make  His  children  under- 
stand the  tenderness  of  His  love,  the  only  phrase  He 
could  put  on  the  lips  of  His  prophet  was,  "As  one 
whom  his  mother  comforteth,  so  will  I."  It  is  as 
though  we  could  never  understand  the  love  of  God  if 
we  had  never  known  the  love  of  a  mother. 

No  wonder  a  man  wants  to  be  a  boy  again  some- 
77 


OLD  TIME  AND   YOUNG   TOM 

times.  No  wonder  that  sometimes,  amid  the  storms 
and  conflicts,  in  all  the  troubles  and  toils  of  life,  a 
man  longs  for  just  one  little  moment  to  go  back  to 
her,  just  to  creep  into  her  arms  once  more;  once 
more  to  lean  his  head  on  the  dearest,  sweetest,  ten- 
derest  pillow  that  ever  a  head  with  an  ache,  or  a 
heart  with  a  sorrow  in  it,  rested  itself  upon,  and  for 
one  happy  moment  cry  away  all  the  troubles  and 
sorrows  and  disappointments  of  his  manhood  years. 
God  pity  him!  He  can't.  Because  maybe  the 
mother  love  is  gone.  And,  anyhow,  he  can't,  because 
he  is  a  man,  and  the  troubles  and  sorrows  of  man- 
hood are  sorrows  that  you  can't  cry  away  in  your 
mother's  arms.  You  have  to  set  your  teeth  and  turn 
your  face  to  the  storm,  and  let  it  rain  and  drive 
against  your  face,  because  you  are  a  man. 

The  boy  won't  always  have  the  mother  arms  to 
run  to,  when  somebody  tramples  on  his  heart  or 
somebody  hurts  his  feelings ;  when  he  is  defeated  and 
discrowned.  That's  a  good  thing  for  the  boy  to  re- 
member before  he  forgets  it.  And  the  mother — oh, 
her  arms  will  ache,  ache,  ache  a  thousand  times  more 
with  their  emptiness  than  ever  they  did  with  the 
78 


THE  RISE  AND  FALL  OE  THE  MUSTACHE 

weight  of  a  tousled  head  and  the  grimy  face  that 
came  tear-stained  to  her  for  comfort.  That  is  a 
good  thing  lor  the  mother  to  remember  before  the 
boy  grows  up. 

In  conclusion,  the  young  people  Have  a  final  spasm 
of  superhuman  wisdom.  They  are  going  to  keep 
house.  They  are  going  to  get  ready  for  housekeep- 
ing the  first  thing.  They  are  going  to  have  that 
house  stocked  from  cellar  to  garret  and  back  again, 
with  everything  they  need  for  a  whole  year — every- 
thing in  the  market.  Just  as  well,  Tom  says,  to  get 
everything  at  once  and  have  it  delivered  right  up  at 
the  house,  as  to  spend  five  or  six  or  ten  or  twenty 
years  in  stocking  up  a  home,  as  his  father  did.  And 
Laura  thinks  so,  too,  and  she  wonders  that  Tom, 
young  as  he  is,  should  know  so  much  more  than  his 
father.  Tom  wonders  at  this  himself,  and  it  puzzles 
him  until  he  is  forty-five  or  fifty  years  old,  and  has 
a  young  Tom  of  his  own  to  advise  him.  So  the 
young  people  make  out  this  wonderful  list  of  all  the 
things  they  have  to  have,  with  the  proper  quantities 
and  prices,  so  they  won't  outrun  their  little  income 
« — fifty  cents'  worth  of  flour;  two  dollars'  worth  of 
79 


OLD  TIME  AND   YOUNG  TOM 

chewing-gum — little  things  like  that.  They  revise 
this  list  until  it  is  humanly  complete. 

Then,  the  first  time  they  want  anything  to  eat, 
they  discover  there  isn't  a  knife  or  a  fork  or  a  plate 
or  a  spoon  in  the  new  house.  And  the  first  day  the 
laundress  comes,  and  the  water  is  hot,  and  the  clothes 
are  all  ready,  it  is  discovered  that  there  isn't  a  wash- 
tub  nearer  than  the  grocery.  And  further  along  in 
the  day  the  discovery  is  made  that  while  Tom  has 
bought  a  clothes-line  that  will  reach  to  the  north  pole 
and  back,  and  then  has  to  be  coiled  up  a  mile  or  two, 
there  isn't  a  clothes-pin  in  the  settlement.  And,  in 
the  course  of  a  week  or  two,  Tom  slowly  awakens 
to  the  realization  of  the  fact  that  he  has  only  begun 
to  get. 

When  the  first  meal  is  prepared  in  the  little  home 
• — no,  that  is  wrong.  The  first  meal  never  is  "pre- 
pared",— it  is  eaten  raw — they  take  dinner  with 
Ma.  They'd  starve  to  death  the  first  month  if  it 
wasn't  for  Ma — her  Ma — the  one  Tom  makes  jokes 
about. 

The  fact  is,  they  have  just  begun  to  buy  things. 
They  live  in  the  sweet  buy  and  buy,  long  before  they 
80 


THE  RISE  AND  FALL  OF  THE  MUSTACHE 

get  to  it.  If  Tom  should  live  to  be  a  hundred  years 
old,  they  would  think,  just  before  he  died,  of  some 
things  they  had  wanted  for  seventy-five  years,  which 
Tom  had  always  forgotten  to  get.  He  says,  in  ex- 
tenuation of  his  fault,  that  he  "can't  remember  ten 
thousand  things  every  time  he  goes  out  of  the  house ; 
he  has  something  to  do  besides  shopping  and  mar- 
keting." He  is  right.  Five  thousand  are  as  many 
things  as  a  married  man  can  carry  on  his  mind  at 
one  time.  Some  men  have  very  poor  memories,  and 
can  only  remember  one  thousand  things — and  they 
must  all  be  the  same  thing.  Then  sometimes  they 
remember  it.  Tom  goes  on  saying  he  "forgot"  until 
he  is  ashamed  to  say  it  any  more.  It  is  such  a  puerile 
reason. 

One  day  he  comes  home  with  a  new  excuse. 
He  says  he  did  order  the  things  but  the  man  for- 
got to  fetch  them  up.  I  don't  know  whether  you 
ought  to  call  that  a  lie  or  not.  It  sounds  like  one — it 
is  not  absolute  truth.  But  I  don't  know  about  this 
remark  being  a  lie,  because  a  lie  is  something  that  is 
calculated  to  deceive.  That  statement  never  deceives 
anybody — it  is  perfectly  harmless.  Young  husband, 
81 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG  TOM 

never  lie  to  your  wife.  Not  only  because  it  is  mean, 
cruel,  brutal,  cowardly;  but  it  is  such  a  waste  of 
talent.  She  knows  you,  backward  and  forward,  she 
knows  you  in  and  out,  round  and  round,  crisscross, 
zigzag,  and  so  on  back  to  the  place  of  beginning. 
She  can  tell  you  when  you  are  telling  her  the 
straight  honest  truth,  and  when  you  are  telling  her 
big  wicked  "whacks,"  just  as  well  by  looking  at 
your  shoulder-blades  as  you  go  out  of  the  door  as 
she  can  when  she  looks  you  right  in  the  eye.  She 
knows  you.  And  sometime,  some  day  of  mutual 
knowledge,  you  will  know  your  little  wife  just  as 
thoroughly  and  just  as  intuitively  as  she  knows  you 
to-day.  But,  by  that  time  you  will  both  of  you  have 
been  in  Heaven  about  two  thousand  years. 

Day  by  day  their  oldest  and  best  friend,  old  Time, 
comes  along,  and  looks  into  the  little  home  to  see 
how  the  young  people  are  getting  along.  He  loves 
young  people,  because  he  sees  what  beautiful  ma- 
terial they  are  of  which  to  make  the  loveliest  kind  of 
old  people ;  and  if  you  give  him  half  a  chance,  chil- 
dren, that  is  just  what  he  will  do  with  you,  and  he 
will  do  it  beautifully.  He  has  a  little  memorandum 
82 


THE  RISE  AND  FALL  OF  THE  MUSTACHE 

of  things  the  young  people  need ;  he  has  thought  of 
things  you  never  have  dreamed  of,  or  would  think  of. 
The  first  thing  that  old  Time  brings  is  a  little 
prosperity — just  enough  to  make  your  heart  sing  for 
gladness.  You  had  that  down  in  your  little  book. 
Then  he  has  a  little  adversity.  Just  enough  to  put 
the  soul  into  the  song  of  the  heart  that  it  couldn't 
have  without  it.  He  brings  just  enough  sunshine  to 
make  the  roses  and  lilies  blossom  in  your  lives.  You 
had  that  down,  too,  in  your  little  book.  Then  he  has 
written  down  for  you  once  in  a  while  some  beautiful 
gray  days.  You  don't  love  the  gray  days  now.  You 
want  the  sunshiny  days,  the  roses  and  the  carnations. 
Let  me  tell  you,  children,  you  will  love  the  gray  days 
just  as  well  when  they  come.  Some  day,  when  the 
heart  is  wearied,  when  the  eyes  are  hot  and  tired  and 
dry  with  weeping,  when  the  face  is  burned  by  the 
noonday  sun,  you  will  know  how  like  a  kiss  of 
blessedness  from  Heaven  comes  the  soft  cool  touch 
of  the  mist,  creeping  up  out  of  the  sea  or  coming 
down  over  the  mountain,  until  it  folds  you  in  a  little 
curtain  of  gray,  soft  as  the  wings  of  a  dove,  and 
shuts  you  in  with  peace  and  rest  and  hope,  and  the 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

tenderness  of  God.  Oh,  you  will  thank  God  again 
and  again  for  the  gray  days. 

Old  Time  brings  into  the  house,  by  and  by,  the 
cooing  music  of  a  baby  voice.  The  baby!  He  puts 
tone  and  color  and  meaning  into  the  home.  Why, 
people  come  into  your  little  home,  and  they  look  at 
the  beautiful  furniture.  They  don't  say,  "Did  that 
table  come  over  in  the  Mayflower?"  Oh,  no — it 
looks  too  slick  and  glossy  and  Grand  Rapidsy  for 
that.  But  one  unemployed  day  the  baby  gets  at  it 
with  the  scissors  and  a  tack-hammer.  Then  when 
people  ask,  "Did  that  lovely  antique  table  come  over 
in  the  Mayflower?"  you  reply,  with  a  superior  air, 
"Oh,  no !  That  came  over  in  the  Ark." 

So  Time  comes  and  goes,  bringing  memories  and 
blessings.  Sends  a  messenger,  one  day,  to  take 
young  Tom  to  college,  and  when  he  goes  away,  he 
leaves  a  great  aching  quiet  in  the  home,  harder  to 
endure  than  the  noisiest  noise  any  boy  ever  made. 
Time  brings  him  home  from  college  by  and  by,  and 
with  him  a  college  yell  that  makes  all  the  other 
noises  he  ever  made  in  his  life,  all  put  together  and 
megaphoned,  sound  in  comparison  like  deep,  pro- 
84 


THE  RISE  AND  FALL  OF  THE  MUSTACHE 

found,  religious  silence.  And  it  makes  life  seem 
real  and  earnest  to  Tom,  and  brings  the  old  laugh 
rippling  over  Laura's  face,  when  they  see  old  Tom's 
first  mustache,  budding  into  second  life,  on  young 
Tom's  face. 

And  still  old  Time  comes  on  his  rounds,  bringing 
each  year  whiter  frosts  to  scatter  on  the  whitening 
mustache,  and  brighter  gleams  of  silver  to  glint  the 
brown  of  Laura's  hair.  Bringing  the  blessings  of 
old  age  and  a  love-locked  home  to  crown  these  com- 
monplace, workaday,  human  lives,  bristling  with 
human  faults,  marred  with  human  mistakes,  scarred 
and  seamed  and  rifted  with  human  troubles,  and 
crowned  with  the  compassion  that  only  perfection 
can  send  upon  imperfection.  Comes,  with  happy 
memories  of  the  past,  and  quiet  confidence  for  the 
future.  Comes,  with  the  changing  scenes  of  day  and 
night;  comes,  with  the  sunny  peace  and  the  back- 
ward dreams  of  age;  comes,  with  December's  drift- 
ing snows,  and  comes — just  as  often — with  the  per- 
fumed roses  of  beautiful  June.  Comes,  until  one 
day,  in  the  golden  harvest-time,  the  eye  of  the  old 
reaper  rests  upon  old  Tom,  standing  right  in  the  line 
85 


OLD  TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

of  the  swath,  amid  the  ripened  grain.  The  sweep  of 
the  noiseless  scythe,  whose  edge  is  never  turned; 
Time  passes  on;  old  Tom  steps  aside,  out  of  young 
Tom's  way,  and  the  mysterious  beautiful  cycle  of  a 
life,  ending  always  where  it  begins,  and  beginning 
ever  where  it  ends,  is  complete. 


MY  KINDERGARTEN  OF 
FIFTY  YEARS 

FIRST— I  will  tell  you  of  the  Kindergarten  it- 
self. Second — Of  the  pupils:  some  of  them 
you  will  know. 

Third  and  last— Of  the  teachers:  they  will  be 
familiar  to  you. 

Of  the  three,  this  is  the  first.    The  Kindergarten. 

What  has  started  me  off  on  Kindergartens  was 
reading  a  circular  that  dropped  out  of  this  morn- 
ing's mail,  announcing  the  opening  of  a  new  kinder- 
garten in  our  neighborhood,  at  which  only  children 
between  the  ages  of  three  and  six  will  be  admitted. 
It  appears  to  a  blind  observer — who  is  waiting  his 
chance  for  a  job  in  the  mill — that  this  old  world  is 
growing  more  exclusive  every  year.  Why  should 
the  teacher  of  this  new  Kindergarten  limit  the  privi- 
leges of  her  school  to  such  very  young  children? 
That  is  one  of  the  fads  of  this  freaky  age.  It  is  true, 
I  believe,  that  the  kindergarten  as  planned  by 
87 


OLD   TIME   AND    YOUNG   TOM 

Froebel  was  designed  for  very  young  children.  But 
then,  Froebel  did  not  live  so  long  as  I  have — he  died 
sixty  years  ago,  and  I  am  living  yet.  If  he  were 
here  now  he  would  know — because  I  would  tell  him 
so  myself,  if  he  didn't  find  it  out  in  any  other  way — 
that  the  Kindergarten  is  a  good  school  for  children 
all  the  way  from  two  years  and  younger  up  to 
seventy. 

At  any  rate,  I  have  been  attending  Kindergarten 
for  almost  seventy  years  and  see  no  chance  of  pro- 
motion yet,  and  indeed,  am  in  no  great  hurry  to 
leave  the  school.  I  think  I  like  it  rather  better  the 
longer  I  attend.  I  find  that  is  usually  the  case  with 
the  older  pupils.  I  think  the  lessons  become  a  little 
harder  as  we  grow  older — at  least,  until  we  get  into 
the  very  advanced  classes.  But  in  the  course  of 
forty  years  a  fellow — I  am  a  Fellow  of  the  Kinder- 
garten, although  a  man  of  the  masculine  sex — it's  a 
co-educational  institution — learns  how  to  study, 
don't  you  know?  He  marks  the  hard  places  and 
"bones"  on  them  for  review,  so  that  he  doesn't  often 
— not  more  than  two  or  three  hundred  times — make 
exactly  the  same  mistake  in  the  same  paragraph. 
88 


MY    KINDERGARTEN    OF    FIFTY    YEARS 

It  was  a  rather  small  school  at  the  start.  Still  it 
had  no  competition;  it  was  the  only  school  in  the 
neighborhood  at  that  time,  and  there  was  no  other 
neighborhood,  and  that  was  the  only  time  there  was. 
The  Garden  of  Eden  they  called  it  then,  or  at  least 
they  do  now,  which  is  much  the  same  thing — all  ex- 
cept the  advanced  scholars  in  the  higher  class;  they 
have  a  new  name  for  it,  which  none  of  the  young- 
sters can  either  spell  or  pronounce,  but  it  means  the 
same  thing.  There  were  but  two  pupils  to  begin 
with,  and  they  hadn't  much  chance.  They  were 
grown-up  children  when  they  were  born,  so  of 
course  you  couldn't  expect  very  much  of  them ;  they 
were  morally  certain  to  make  mistakes  the  first 
thing.  A  child  who  is  born  too  old  is  always  handi- 
capped in  this  school.  It  is  a  dangerous  thing  to 
know  it  all,  and  all  at  once.  It  is  a  big  load  to 
carry,  and  the  best  way  to  learn  how  to  carry  it 
without  spilling  is  to  load  up  an  ounce  or  two  at  a 
time — "line  upon  line,  precept  upon  precept,  here  a 
little  and  there  a  little" — it's  a  slow  sort  of  way  and 
takes  a  whole  lifetime  for  some  pupils. 

But  the  load  is  put  on  solidly  in  that  way,  and 
89 


OLD  TIME   AND   YOUNG  TOM 

when  the  pack  is  "cinched"  as  it  should  be,  a  fellow 
can  go  to  the  end  of  the  trail  without  losing  a  pound 
of  it,  except,  of  course,  that  portion  of  his  load  that 
he  unpacks  and  throws  away  as  fast  as  he  finds  it  to 
be  worthless.  That's  usually  about  one-half — well, 
say  three-fourths  of  it.  I  have  read  in  the  Book  that 
when  a  boy  or  girl  from  the  Kindergarten  is  pro- 
moted to  the  High  School  he  or  she  has  to  unload 
everything  at  the  strait  gate. 

This  school  at  Eden  didn't  last  very  long:  broke 
up  in  a  little  while.  A  loafer  came  in  from  the 
street  one  day  and  made  trouble.  And  there  has 
never  been  a  loafer  in  all  the  world  from  that  day 
to  this  who  was  good  for  anything  else  or  who  ever 
did  anything  but  make  trouble.  This  beggar  from 
outside  came  in  with  a  short-cut  curriculum ;  agreed 
to  take  the  pupils  and  teach  them  in  five  min- 
utes all  they  could  learn  by  the  old- fogy  kinder- 
garten methods  in  seventy  years.  Easy  learning, 
too,  easy  as  eating  your  dinner.  This  caught  the 
kindergartners.  Something  easy,  that  was  what 
they  wanted.  Been  so  ever  since;  "German  in  six 
easy  lessons";  "Violin  without  a  master";  "Earn 
90 


MY    KINDERGARTEN    OE   FIFTY   YEARS 

sixty  dollars  and  seventy-five  cents  per  week  at 
home".  Anything  of  that  sort  catches  the  pupils 
every  time.  Works  right  along. 

Since  I've  been  going  to  school  I've  seen  Hundreds 
of  the  pupils  every  year  drawn  away  from  the  old 
books  by  these  short  cuts.  Fellow  comes  along  and 
says:  "Can't  remember,  eh?  Shouldn't  think  you 
could,  the  way  you're  trying  to  learn.  Take  you 
five,  maybe  ten  years  to  cultivate  a  memory  at  that 
rate.  Now  for  five  dollars  a  lesson  I'll  teach  you  a 
system  in  five  lessons  by  which  you  can  remember 
every  date  and  important  event  in  the  history  of  the 
world,  and  every  combination  of  figures  between  ad- 
dition and  cube  root,  longer  than  you  live." 

And  the  pupils  I've  seen  spend  money  to  "buy"  a 
memory  as  you  would  an  overcoat!  Another  ped- 
ler  comes  along:  "Want  to  practise  medicine? 
Well,  it  will  take  you  four,  maybe  five  years  of  the 
hardest  kind  of  boning  at  this  old  dust-yard  of  a 
school;  you  come  with  me  and  I'll  sell  you  a  di- 
ploma, good  anywhere,  that'll  cost  you  only  ten  or 
twelve  weeks'  loafing  and  a  hundred  dollars."  First 
thing  we  know  we  have  a  doctor  in  the  class.  An- 
91 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG  TOM 

other  faker  comes  along;  finds  a  boy  who  wants  to 
be  a  preacher;  can  preach  a  little,  but  he  would  like 
to  be  a  theologian.  "All  right,"  the  faker  says,  "got 
a  degree  of  D.  D.  right  here  in  the  desk;  cost  you 
fifty  dollars  and  an  old  sermon."  Boy  gets  it, 
frames  it,  and  hangs  it  up  in  his  study.  Wears  his 
D.  D.  around  in  public,  proud  as  the  crow  with  the 
peacock  feather. 

You  might  think  these  fellows  would  get  a  misfit 
sometime,  but  they  never  do — never.  A  fifty-dollar 
degree  fits  a  fifty-dollar  man  like  the  paper  on  the 
wall.  Same  way  with  all  the  "short-cut"  honors. 
The  fakers  are  good  tailors;  they  can — and  to  do 
them  full  justice,  they  dp — make  their  wares  to  fit 
their  customers  every  time.  And  one  popular  class 
of  "instructors"  in  this  line  is  the  professors  who 
teach  short  cuts  to  wealth.  They  do  a  free-dispen- 
sary business  with  war-price  profits,  and  they  also 
keep  a  finishing  school  in  Canada  for  Americans, 
and  in  the  United  States  for  Canadians. 

One  trouble  with  these  short-cut  graduates  is 
that  they  have  to  come  back  to  the  Kindergarten  for 
final  "exams."  Somehow  or  other  there  is  no  get- 
92 


MY    KINDERGARTEN    OF   FIFTY   YEARS 

ting  out  of  that.  All  the  diplomas,  and  certificates, 
and  honors,  and  degrees  at  all  the  "short-cut"  uni- 
versities— the  short  cuts  are  always  "universities"; 
the  shorter  the  cut  the  more  universally  universal 
is  the  university — can't  pass  a  pupil  in  the  Kinder- 
garten. Seems  to  be  an  old  law  in  the  school  that 
when  once  a  pupil  enters  it,  even  at  a  very  early  age, 
he  is  kept  on  the  rolls  until  the  time  for  his  final 
examination. 

And  then  the  trouble  is  sure  to  begin ;  the  crook- 
edness and  the  wearisome  length  of  the  short  cut 
are  made  apparent.  For  it  is  an  old  law  of  the  Kin- 
dergarten that  the  pupils  "shall  walk  in  a  straight 
way"  and  "make  straight  paths  for  their  feet",  and 
although  it  is  known  that  experiments  in  short  cuts 
have  been  going  on  for  something  like  six  or  seven 
thousand  years  it  turns  out  at  every  examination  that 
the  shortest  distance  between  two  points  is  a  straight 
line,  and  the  pupil  who  branches  off  that  line  to  find 
a  short  cut  to  the  end  of  it,  has  to  make  a  "goose- 
neck" somewhere  and  come  back  again. 

On  this  account,  and  on  several  thousand  others, 
it  is  better  and  easier  to  remain  in  the  Kindergarten 
93 


OLD  TIME  AND   YOUNG  TOM 

and  take  the  full  course  just  as  the  teacher  arranges 
it.  It  does  seem  a  little  slow  sometimes,  and  we 
do  try  to  hurry  the  teacher  up  a  little.  But  some- 
how or  other,  while  we  in  the  Kindergarten  plod 
along  in  the  same  pld  way,  and  the  short-cut  fel- 
lows with  the  elective  courses  go  sky-rocketing  and 
mortor-cycling  past  until  they  disappear  away  ahead 
of  us,  miles  and  miles,  over  the  hills  and  down  the 
valleys,  and  across  the  plains  in  clouds  of  dust  and 
steam,  and  smoke  and  sparks,  and  thunders  of  "hur- 
rahs", until  our  sighs  can  be  heard  all  through  the 
schoolroom  because  we  are  so  hopelessly  "slow", 
yet  have  we  always  observed  one  thing,  among  sev- 
eral others. 

I  have  observed  it  six  times.  Always  and  al- 
ways when  we  start  to  school  one  bright,  crisp, 
bracing,  winter  morning  with  our  new  resolu- 
tion books  under  our  arms — just  opened  for  that 
year's  study — we  shout  as  we  meet  one  another, 
"Happy  New  Year!"  A  familiar  voice  chimes  in, 
"Happy  New  Year!"  and  lo!  the  short-cut  fel- 
lows, every  one  of  them,  just  abreast  of  us!  "Why," 
we  say,  "how  long  is  the  year  in  the  Universal  Uni- 
94 


MY   KINDERGARTEN    OE   FIFTY   YEARS 

versity  of  all  Universities?"  "Three  hundred  and 
sixty-five  days,"  say  the  fellows.  Just  what  it  is  in 
the  Kindergarten,  precisely.  This  puts  us  all  in  a 
musing  mood  that  morning,  so  the  school  is  un- 
usually quiet.  And  being  quiet  we  have  a  better 
look  at  .Wisdom,  and  can  see  that  our  teacher  is 
"more  precious  than  rubies",  that  "all  the  things  we 
can  desire  are  not  to  be  compared  unto  her" ;  we  see 
that  she  holds  "length  of  days  in  her  right  hand", 
so  there  is  no  need  for  us  to  be  in  a  hurry. 

I  have  a  fancy  that  it  is  really  pleasanter,  too,  in 
the  Kindergarten  than  in  college.  I  never  went  to 
college;  maybe  that's  the  reason  it  always  looks  to 
me  like  hard  work — from  the  outside.  There  is  al- 
ways so  much  questioning,  and  upsetting,  and  con- 
tradicting, and  proving  going  on.  Everybody 
"wants  to  know,  you  know."  Whereas  in  the  Kin- 
dergarten if  there  comes  along  a  lesson  that  we 
can't  understand — and  we  have  lots  of  them  every 
year — why,  we  accept  it  and  believe  it  just  because 
the  teacher  says  so.  They  call  this  childish,  and 
say  that  much  of  our  so-called  study  is  child's  play. 
Well,  I  guess  that  is  true — at  least,  partly  true.  At 
95 


OLD  TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

any  rate,  it  is  easier  to  play  at  your  work  than  it  is 
to  work  at  your  play. 

And  I  notice  that  as  the  pupils  grow  older  they 
love  the  kindergarten  studies  more  and  more.  I 
frequently  see  them  with  their  Book  even  in  play- 
time, old  pupils  who  have  been  reading  in  the  same 
Book  for  fifty  or  sixty  years,  still  poring  over  the 
same  old  lessons.  You  would  think  they  would 
have  the  Book  by  heart  by  that  time.  Well,  some 
of  them  have;  and  they  seem  to  love  it  more  than 
any  of  the  younger  pupils  who  are  just  beginning 
it.  The  fact  is,  the  less  people  study  it  the  less  they 
like  it. 

Now,  I  very  rarely — almost  never — in  fact,  I 
never  did  see  a  student — the  students  are  in  the 
higher  classes,  you  know — pack  away  an  algebra  in 
his  grip-sack  for  summer  reading  when  he  was  go- 
ing away  on  a  little  jaunt.  I  don't  suppose  you  ever 
on  the  train  saw  a  woman  so  intensely  absorbed  in 
the  thrilling  interest  of  the  story  of  geometry  begin- 
ning, "The  three  points  in  which  any  line  cuts  the 
sides  of  a  triangle  and  the  projections,  from  any 
point  in  the  plane,  of  the  vertices  of  the  triangle  on 
96 


MY    KINDERGARTEN    OF    FIFTY   YEARS 

to  the  same  line  are  six  points  in  involution,"  that 
she  abstractedly  paid  full  fare  for  a  half-fare  boy. 
I  suppose  if  you  should  ask  the  train-boy  for  a  copy 
of  Dames'  Legendre  he  would  fall  down  dead  on 
the  floor.  But  don't  try  it,  thinking  to  secure  peace 
and  privacy  on  your  journey  thereby.  The  train- 
boy  is  quick  to  seize  new  ideas.  He  may  pull  it  out 
of  the  pile  on  you.  Then  you  would  probably  fall 
out  of  the  window — which  is  absurd. 

But  this  old  Kindergarten  Book  you  will  see  in 
the  hands  of  the  children  long  after  every  other 
book  has  lost  its  charm  and  changed  its  teaching, 
and  has  been  banished  from  the  library  because  it 
has  become  antiquated,  and  its  facts  have  gone  to 
the  dust-heap,  its  theories  have  been  exploded,  its 
geography  is  a  joke  and  its  politics  so  dead  they  are 
offensive.  It  is  the  only  Book  they  teach  in  the  Kin- 
dergarten. The  children  begin  to  study  it  long  be- 
fore they  can  read  or  even  speak  plainly.  And  it's 
the  last  Book  they  lay  down. 

Oh,  sometimes,  that  is  to  say,  a  great  many 
times,  eminent  men,  very  wise  and  learned  men 
— they  themselves  said  so,  and  they  ought  to 
97 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

know — have  tried  to  put  the  Book  out  of  the 
school  and  introduce  more  practical,  instructive, 
modern  books  containing  better  teaching;  books 
which  they  wrote  themselves  especially  to  meet  the 
need  and  supply  the  demand  for  just  such  books. 
But  somehow  or  other  the  new  books  were  too  new ; 
they  smelled  of  varnish;  the  veneer  kept  cracking 
and  peeling  off;  they  were  gorgeously  bound,  but 
some  of  the  pages  were  printed  upside  down;  and 
they  were  illustrated  with  nothing  but  full-length 
portraits  of  the  author  in  various  attitudes  admiring 
himself;  and  the  author  wrote  the  answers  to  his 
problems  first  and  then  tried  to  make  the  problems 
fit  the  answers  without  working  them  out,  so  that 
very  often  he  guessed  wrong,  and  that  confused  and 
perplexed  the  children  and  made  their  heads  ache. 
So  they  always  went  back  to  the  old  Book,  and  read 
in  one  of  their  lessons  therein  that  "Of  making 
many  books  there  is  no  end;  and  much  study  is  a 
weariness  of  the  flesh,"  and  that  the  "whole  matter" 
of  education  consisted  in  learning  one  very  short 
lesson :  "Fear  God,  and  keep  His  commandments ; 
for  this  is  the  whole  duty  of  man." 


MY    KINDERGARTEN    OF    FIFTY    YEARS 

And  little,  short,  easy-appearing  lesson  as  it  is,  un- 
less you  have  been  to  the  Kindergarten  yourself,  you 
wouldn't  believe  how  hard  it  is.  I  have  known  it  to 
cost  years,  and  trouble,  and  disappointment  and  sor- 
row, and  grievous  punishment,  headache  and  heart- 
ache, groans  and  tears,  until  the  page  was  so  stained 
and  blistered  that  the  gray-haired  child  couldn't  have 
read  the  lesson  had  it  not  been  burned  on  the  heart. 
It  is  a  pleasant  school,  this  Kindergarten,  but  it  isn't 
an  easy  one.  I  don't  know  about  college  and  foot- 
ball being  so  much  harder,  after  all. 

And  now  the  pupils? 


II 


It  is  pleasant,  as  one's  years  in  the  Kindergarten 
wane  into  the  afternoon,  to  turn  over  the  pages 
of  Memory's  album  and  look  once  more  upon  the 
faces  of  the  children  now  scattered  here  and  there 
in  the  several  departments  of  the  old  school,  or  who 
have  been  graduated  and  sent  on  higher. 

Of  course,  you  remember  little  Minnie  Tulait,  the 
tardy  scholar?  Poor  little  girl!  She  never  left 
99 


OLD   TIME   AND    YOUNG   TOM 

home  until  she  heard  the  bell  ring;  then  she  ran  all 
the  way  and  came  bursting  into  the  schoolroom  out 
of  breath,  her  bonnet  hanging  down  her  back,  lid 
off  her  lunch  basket  and  a  rip  in  her  book  bag,  just 
after  her  name  had  been  called  and  a  tardy  mark 
put  down  against  her.  Then  she  cried  her  eyes  out 
and  came  just  about  as  late  the  next  day.  She 
rushed  into  chapel  just  as  the  text  had  been  read, 
got  to  the  picnic  after  dinner,  and  reached  the  door 
at  recess  just  in  time  to  turn  around  and  go  back 
to  her  seat. 

When  she  grew  to  be  a  big  girl  she  married 
one  of  the  boys  in  school — Bee  Heindand — and 
was  married  in  her  school  gown  because  her  wed- 
ding-dress wasn't  finished!.  Bee  was  a  good  boy; 
he  met  Minnie  frequently  when  they  were  both 
trying  to  catch  up.  He  always  studied  yesterday's 
lesson  to-day,  and  was  so  far  behind  the  rest  of  his 
own  fellows  that  a  visitor  never  could  tell  whether 
he  was  at  the  foot  of  the  class  ahead  or  at  the  head 
of  the  one  behind.  When  at  last  Bee  got  into  one 
of  the  upper  classes  he  went  into  politics  because 
the  Ship  of  State  must  have  a  rudder,  and  he  was 

100 


MY    KINDERGARTEN    OF    FIFTY    YEARS 

just  the  man  for  the  place.  But  when  I  last  saw 
him  he  was  the  "log-chip",  trailing  at  the  end  of  the 
log-line,  two  hundred  fathoms  behind  the  rudder. 

And  the  timid  scholars  who  used  to  huddle  to- 
gether! The  Fraid-Cats  and  the  Faint-Hearts— lots 
of  them  used  to  come  to  school  from  Lonesome 
Hollow  and  Aspen  Grove,  and  out  that  way.  They 
were  always  in  a  condition  of  semi-distraction. 
Whenever  a  door  opened  suddenly  they  started, 
looked  fearsomely  over  their  shoulders,  and  hud- 
dled closer  together.  Whenever  a  boy  was  called 
up  for  a  "birching"  they  turned  white,  and  when 
the  boy  howled,  Minerva  Symptoms  and  the  other 
girls  cried.  No  matter  who  was  punished,  nor  for 
what,  these  tender-hearted  ones  suffered  more  than 
did  the  boy  who  was  leaping  and  shrieking  under 
the  scourge.  The  rest  of  us  knew  that,  as  a  rule, 
the  louder  the  culprit  yelled  and  the  higher  he  leaped 
the  less  was  he  hurt.  Consequently  we  didn't  have 
much  sympathy  for  the  noisy  sufferer.  The  fellow 
who  wanted  to  show  us  his  welts  and  bruises  at  re- 
cess, and  told  us  how  much  it  hurt  and  how  hard 
the  teacher  had  laid  it  on,  made  us  weary. 
101 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

Sometimes  this  weeper  came  whining  and  sniffling 
to  a  boy  who  had  raw  wales  under  his  shirt  that 
hadn't  healed  for  years,  and  who  never  said  a  word 
about  them.  Only  once  in  a  while,  when  he  flinched 
at  some  of  our  rough  play,  did  he  show  that  he  had  a 
raw  spot  somewhere.  And  oftener  there  were  girls 
who  hid  their  aches,  and  laughed  and  sang  when 
their  hearts  were  breaking  and  never  asked  for  sym- 
pathy. 

These  sufferers  we  loved  and  admired,  when  by 
some  accident  we  found  them  out.  But  the  howler 
was  a  wearisome  creature,  who  would  remember  a 
toothache  for  twenty  years,  and  tell  about  it  every 
day  if  he  could  find  anybody  to  listen  to  him.  I 
think  it  was  that  way  in  our  school  ever  since  it  was 
founded ;  the  martyr  who  went  around  whining  and 
begging  for  sympathy  never  got  any,  and  the  boy  or 
girl  who  took  the  scourging  with  clenched  teeth  and 
set  lips,  and  then  went  away  to  cry  it  out  alone, 
found  tender  faces,  gentle  words,  warm  hearts  and 
helping  hands  waiting  for  them  when  they  came 
back  with  the  tear-stains  washed  away. 

When  we  healthy,  shouting,  romping  pupils  played 
.102 


MY    KINDERGARTEN    OF    FIFTY    YEARS 

a  little  too  roughly  with  the  gentle-hearted  ones, 
they  never  slapped  back.  All  they  asked  of  the  rest 
of  the  school  was  to  be  let  alone  in  their  own  quiet 
corner  of  the  playground.  Sometimes,  when  they 
were  carried  away  by  the  contagion  of  some  very 
unusual  exhilaration,  they  rushed  madly  into  a  game 
of  "tag" ;  and  once,  it  is  told  in  the  traditions  of  the 
school,  they  played  "crack  the  whip".  But  little 
Timmy  Dolesome  got  cracked  off  into  a  tree-box, 
and  sprained  his  wrist  and  tore  his  jacket  down  the 
back,  and  they  never  played  such  a  rough  game 
again.  But  it  was  something  to  be  remembered,  and 
to  be  told  in  the  twilight,  long  years  after,  like  a 
ghost  story. 

With  all  their  timidity  it  was  noticed  by  every- 
body that  they  were  the  calmest  pupils  in  the  room 
the  day  we  thought  the  schoolhouse  was  on  fire 
and  bound  to  burn  down.  One  of  the  youngest 
pupils  in  the  primary  department,  while  reading  the 
lesson  carefully,  discovered  that  what  we  had  al- 
ways thought  was  a  comma  was  nothing  but  a  fly 
speck.  The  announcement  of  this  discovery  created 
such  a  smoke  that  for  some  time  we  couldn't  see  the 
103 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

windows,  and  we  could  distinctly  feel  the  everlast- 
ing foundations  giving  way  under  the  schoolhouse. 
Amid  all  the  clamor,  and  shouting,  and  wailing,  the 
timid  ones  sat  in  their  places,  soothing  the  younger 
children  about  them  and  quietly  reading  their  les- 
sons. 

When  the  tumult  was  quieted,  and  we  all  set- 
tled back  to  our  work  and  found  that  the  "Reader" 
said  just  what  it  had  been  saying  for  several  thou- 
sand years,  the  only  pupils  who  did  not  assemble  on 
the  platform  and  tell  what  they  thought  when  they 
saw  it  coming,  and  how  they  felt,  and  what  they 
said,  and  what  they  would  have  done  if  it  had  lasted 
ten  minutes  longer,  were  these  pupils  from  Aspen 
Grove. 

All  the  pupils  in  the  Kindergarten  were  not  nearly 
so  bright  as  yourself — oh,  no!  There  were  some 
boys  and  girls,  I  remember,  who  had  to  be  taught 
the  same  thing  more  than  a  hundred  times.  You 
could  count  on  their  coming  up  at  every  review  to 
fail  on  the  same  lessons.  Their  books  were  a  sight ; 
dog-eared  and  thumbed,  blistered  with  tears  and 
dingy  with  finger-marks.  Some  of  the  lessons  were 
104 


MY    KINDERGARTEN    OF    FIFTY    YEARS 

cried  over  until  you  could  hardly  read  the  lines. 
There  were  all  sorts  of  marks  on  the  margin  to  help 
the  stupid  learner  to  remember.  They  would  write 
the  answers  on  their  cuffs,  and  ink  the  figures  on 
their  thumb  nails  for  "pointers".  No  good.  They 
either  forgot  to  look  at  the  marks,  or  else  couldn't 
remember  what  the  figures  meant.  "Precept  upon 
precept,  line  upon  line,  here  a  little  and  there  a 
little." 

We  used  to  lose  all  patience  with  them  because  it 
seemed  to  us  they  kept  the  class  back,  and  lowered 
our  average  so  that  we  didn't  show  up  well  on  exhi- 
bition days.  The  majority  of  the  class  wanted  them 
expelled  or  put  back  into  the  lower  classes.  But 
somehow  the  Teacher  seemed  unusually  patient  and 
gentle  with  those  pupils. 

There  was  one  boy,  named  Thomas  Something, 
who  had  to  have  everything  explained  and  proved  to 
him  so  clearly  that  a  baby  could  understand  it  be- 
fore he  would  believe  it.  And  another  one,  Some- 
body Peter,  who  appeared  to  be  as  full  of  blunders 
as  a  cactus  is  of  prickles.  They  were  kept  in  the 
class,  for  all  their  blundering  and  stupid  ways,  al- 
105 


OLD   TIME    AND    YOUNG   TOM 

though  a  great  many  of  the  wiser  and  brighter  pupils 
predicted  that  such  lax  discipline  would  break  up  the 
school.  But  it  didn't.  And  a  great  many  years  ago, 
when  the  school  was  several  thousand  years  younger 
than  it  now  is,  one  of  the  pupils  named  David  got  to 
thinking  about  the  discipline  of  the  school  one  day, 
and  wrote,  as  a  result  of  his  investigation,  that  if  the 
Teacher  should  mark  demerits  there  wouldn't  be  a 
pupil  left  in  the  school  to  miss  a  lesson.  Said  it 
somewhat  that  way  in  a  song  which  he  thought  he 
wrote  at  the  time,  but  which  some  very  wise  pupils 
afterward  explained  he  didn't  write  until  he  had 
been  dead  eight  hundred  years,  and  then  got  some- 
body else  to  write  it  for  him. 

Worse  off  than  the  stupid  fellows,  who  kept  on 
studying  the  harder  the  oftener  they  missed,  was 
the  poor  fellow  who  stopped  when  he  failed  the  first 
time.  Gave  right  up;  said  there  was  no  use  trying, 
and  didn't  try  any  more.  Had  been  getting  along 
first-rate,  you  know ;  got  good  marks,  learned  easily, 
and  seemed  to  hold  on  to  what  he  learned. 

But  at  last  one  day  there  came  the  hard  one  that 
lurks  somewhere  in  the  pages  of  the  Book  for  every 
106 


MY    KINDERGARTEN    OF    FIFTY    YEARS 

one  of  us;  a  tough  lesson  which  the  old  heads  had 
cried  over  in  their  time ;  a  page  that  was  blurred  with 
the  tears  of  generations  of  pupils;  lines  that  were 
hard  to  scan  and  harder  to  construe.  And  when  he 
stumbled  on  this  one,  and  couldn't  learn  it  right 
away,  Hadda  Nuff  shut  his  book  with  a  slam,  got  up 
from  his  desk,  and  said  he  wouldn't  study  any  more 
if  that  was  the  way  they  were  going  to  make  a  fellow 
"bone".  Said  the  Book  had  no  sense  in  it,  anyhow ; 
declared  that  all  the  answers  in  it  were  wrong,  and 
went  straight  away  to  a  "Short-Cut  University  of 
All  Universal  Universities,"  that  guaranteed  him  a 
dead-sure  thing  on  his  diploma  when  he  was  matric- 
ulated. Whenever  you  heard  a  boy  or  girl  slap  a 
book  down  on  the  desk  and  cry  out,  "This  is  a  hard 
saying,"  you  knew  somebody  was  going  to  leave 
school.  You  see,  there  was  always  an  idea  that  if 
you  didn't  read  the  Book  you  would  never  have  to 
learn  the  lessons  that  were  in  it. 

We  can  never  forget  the  Sneaks  who  were  in  the 

old  school  in  our  time,  can  we?    Used  to  sit  away 

back  in  the  last  row  where  they  could  see  the  whole 

school,  watch  the  rest  of  us  like  cats,  and  tell  on  us 

107 


OLD    TIME   AND    YOUNG   TOM 

whenever  they  caught  us  playing  in  school  hours, 
whispering  during  prayer,  or  throwing  paper  wads 
against  the  ceiling.  We  would  get  found  out  some 
time,  anyhow,  but  it  made  us  detest  the  whole  tribe 
of  Sneaks  none  the  less.  They  were  nearly  all 
cross-eyed;  you  never  could  tell  what  they  were 
looking  at.  They  were  well  enough  behaved  them- 
selves— not  because  they  were  well  bred,  but  because 
they  were  willing  to  endure  anything  for  the  sweet 
reward  of  catching  somebody  else  in  mischief  and 
telling  on  the  culprit. 

It  was  once  rumored  that  an  organization  of 
the  pupils  was  contemplated  by  means  of  which 
all  faults  were  to  be  eliminated  from  the  school, 
and  everybody  was  to  be  made  good  and  happy. 
For  weeks  while  this  talk  was  going  on,  and 
everybody  was  eager  and  enthusiastic  and  excited 
over  the  plan,  the  Sneaks  pined  away  and  sulked; 
they  turned  their  faces  to  the  wall,  refused  food,  and 
would  not  be  comforted.  But  happily  for  them,  one 
day  one  of  the  best  girls  in  school — she  was  presi- 
dent of  the  new  society  of  "The  Fraterosis  of  Eman- 
cipated Woman" — in  a  superhuman  effort  to  keep 
108 


MY    KINDERGARTEN    OF    FIFTY    YEARS 

one  good  resolution  all  day,  broke  half  a  dozen 
better  ones,  and  the  Sneaks  brightened  up — for  they 
caught  her  every  time — and  were  cheerful  and 
happy  all  the  rest  of  the  term.  They  thrived  on 
other  people's  stumblings.  They  utilized  your  mis- 
takes for  their  chewing-gum.  They  came  of  an  old 
family,  and  dated  back  to  the  Garden  of  Eden, 
where  their  ancestor  was  the  next  settler  after  Adam 
and  Eve.  He  settled  them,  too.  "Should  I  not  say 
'those  two'?"  No,  daughter,  I  shouldn't;  I  mean 
just  what  I  say — "them,  too." 

And  the  Bullies  in  the  school.  I  guess  there  will 
always  be  bullies  in  all  schools.  There  were  some 
mean  ones  in  the  kindergarten.  The  boy  bully  was 
always  a  coward,  of  course;  a  bit  of  a  sneak  as  well, 
cringing  to  the  big  boys  and  brutal  to  the  little  ones. 
In  the  presence  of  the  Teacher  he  was  half  crazed 
with  terror,  crying  out,  "What  have  I  to  do  with 
thee  ?"  But  the  weak  pupil,  whom  he  could  handle, 
he  mauled  without  mercy.  It  was  his  nature  to  be 
brutal.  Rather  than  not  have  anything  to  worry  he 
would  torture  a  hog,  even  though  he  had  to  live  with 
the  animal  to  get  at  him. 

109 


OLD   TIME   AND    YOUNG   TOM 

'  And  there  was  a  girl  bully  in  school  at  the  same 
time.  I  knew  her  well, — tongue  as  sharp  as  a  brier 
and  tireless  as  a  wolf.  You  couldn't  look  in  her 
direction  any  time  in  the  day  without  seeing  some 
child  within  reach  of  her  crying.  She  bullied  you 
during  prayers  or  other  times  when  the  school  was 
unusually  quiet,  and  you  did  not  dare  utter  a  sound. 
She  was  the  girl  who  would  jab  a  steel  pen  into 
your  leg  in  class  when  the  Teacher  wasn't  looking. 
The  vicious  poke  brought  tears  into  your  eyes  like  a 
briny  fountain. 

Then  the  girl  bully  would  look  supernaturally 
good;  she  would  put  on  the  meekest  countenance, 
arch  her  eyebrows  in  the  most  innocent  surprise 
and  say,  "Why,  whatever  is  the  matter?"  Then, 
if  the  weeping  one  would  say,  "You  stuck  that 
pen  into  me,"  the  bully's  eyes  would  open  wider  than 
ever,  and  she  would  say,  in  such  sweet  innocent 
astonishment,  with  two  circumflex  inflections,  "M-e  ? 
M-e  ?  Why,  the  idea !  I  never  touched  you !"  And 
everybody  in  the  class  believed  her  except  the 
Teacher  and  the  pupils  whom  she  had  jabbed  at 
other  times,  and  the  timid  ones  who  saw  her  but 
no 


MY    KINDERGARTEN    OF    FIFTY    YEARS 

were  afraid  to  tell  lest  she  should  jab  them  at  some 
convenient  season. 

And  the  lazy  scholars,  who  did  so  little  that  they 
never  had  time  to  do  anything;  who  were  continu- 
ally borrowing  your  books  because  their  own  were 
so  much  harder ;  they  were  always  complaining  that 
they  "couldn't  get  a  start".  It  would  take  an  earth- 
quake to  start  some  of  them,  and  the  rest  of  them 
wanted  a  start  that  would  last  to  the  end  of  the 
journey. 

And  the  poor  scholars,  who  had  to  work  their  way 
through  school,  had  no  money  to  buy  books,  had  no 
private  coaches  and  no  trots,  and  no  time  to  play, 
and  yet  seemed  to  learn  so  much  that  wasn't  in  the 
books !  There  was  a  boy  of  this  class  in  school  when 
I  was  in  the  primary  department.  His  name  was 
Abraham  Lincoln.  His  Latin  would  make  you  laugh ; 
he  had  no  Greek,  and  it  must  have  been  a  circus  to 
hear  him  read  French. 

But  one  day  when  somebody  put  dynamite  un- 
der the  schoolhouse,  and  we  were  sure  it  was 
going  to  be  blown  into  Kingdom  Come  and  part 
way  back  again,  this  boy  took  his  place  on 
in 


OLD   TIME   AND    YOUNG   TOM 

the  platform  close  by  the  Teacher's  desk,  and  had 
everything  straightened  out  while  the  rest  of  us 
were  wringing  our  hands  and  creeping  under  the 
desks.  Then  he  went  into  the  High  School  and  we 
never  saw  him  again.  And  the  good  scholars !  Well, 
if  we  begin  to  talk  about  them,  people  will  think  we 
have  organized  a  mutual  admiration  society.  But  it 
was  a  good  school,  wasn't  it  ?  And  it  is  a  great  deal 
better  than  it  used  to  be,  isn't  it?  And  we  learned 
as  much  in  it  as  we  have  been  able  to  carry  around 
and  use,  didn't  we? 


Ill 


It  has  often  been  urged  against  the  very  large 
schools  that  the  instructors  have  little  or  no  per- 
sonal acquaintance  with  the  pupils ;  that  they  merely 
lecture  to  great  classes,  and  have  nothing  to  do  with 
the  individual.  But  in  the  Kindergarten,  although  it 
was  far  and  away  the  largest  school  in  the  world, 
and  many  of  the  oldest  and  wisest  scholars  said  it 
had  been  overcrowded  for  years,  the  Teachers  knew 
every  one  of  the  pupils,  and  gave  to  each  member  of 

112 


MY    KINDERGARTEN    OF    FIFTY    YEARS 

the  class  private  instruction,  suited  to  the  age  and 
strength  and  intelligence  of  the  learner.  And  this 
personal  interest  they  retained  even  after  the  scholar 
had  grown  up  and  taken  the  degree  of  grandfather 
or  grandmother.  There  never  was  a  moment  when 
a  child  could  feel  certain  that  the  eye  of  one  of  the 
Teachers  wasn't  resting  steadily  upon  him. 

Why,  it  hasn't  been  a  month  since  the  Monitor 
came  over  into  my  end  of  the  dormitory  late  one 
night,  when  everybody  else  was  snoring  like  a  No- 
vember gale,  and  stopped  at  the  side  of  my  bed  and 
said: 

"Do  you  remember  the  day  you  hit  poor  little 
Feron  Tremlin  on  the  back  of  the  neck  with  a  great 
snowball,  just  because  he  ran  for  mayor  on  the 
Repemocratican  ticket  ?" 

"Yes,"  I  said,  "I  remember  all  about  it;  I  did  hit 
him,  but  he — " 

"I  know  he  did,"  replied  the  Monitor,  "but  you 
knew  you  might  just  as  well  hit  him  with  a  sponge. 
You  knew  how  soft-hearted  he  was.  Turn  that 
blanket  down." 

"But,"  I  said,  twisting  that  woven  shield  closely 


OLD   TIME   AND    YOUNG    TOM 

about  my  neck,  "you've  whipped  me  for  that  more 
than  a  hundred  times." 

"Yes,  I  know;  and  likely  I'll  whip  you  for  it  a 
hundred  times  more,  unless  you  learn  the  lesson  by 
heart.  You  don't  half  know  it  yet.  Didn't  I  see  you 
to-day  tie  Tinklin  Cymbal's  apron-strings  to  her 
slate  frame,  so  that  when  she  stood  up  to  sing  all  her 
books  went  crashing  to  the  floor?" 

"Yes,"  I  admitted,  "but  that  was  only  for  fun. 
Everybody  laughed." 

"And  poor  Cymbal  cried,"  replied  the  Monitor. 
"You're  too  fond  of  fun  that  makes  people  cry. 
Turn  down  that  blanket,  and  remember  I'll  give  you 
thirty-nine  for  this  every  time  my  sister  reminds  me 
of  it." 

Saying  which',  fie  laid  them  on. 

This  sister  of  whom  the  Monitor  spoke  is  a  girl 
named  Memory.  She  teaches  the  older  pupils.  She 
carries  a  memorandum-book  with  everybody's  name 
in  it.  She  used  to  come  prowling  about  the  dormi- 
tories at  the  most  inconvenient  hours,  and  wake  her 
brother  when  he  was  sound  asleep  and  as  good  as  a 
114 


MY    KINDERGARTEN    OF    FIFTY    YEARS 

corpse,  not  troubling  anybody,  and  say  to  him : 
"Have  you  your  knout  handy?  Come  with  me." 
And  then  she  would  tell  on  a  fellow,  and  the  Monitor 
would  lay  it  on  to  him  all  the  more  savagely  for  be- 
ing disturbed  at  such  an  unseemly  hour.  We  could 
put  the  Monitor  to  sleep  if  Memory  would  keep  out 
of  the  way.  And  yet  I  have  read  in  the  old  traditions 
of  the  school  that  the  longer  he  slept  the  worse  he 
was  when  he  awoke,  and  that  it  was  not  possible  to 
keep  him  asleep  forever.  You  might  smother  him 
for  fifty  years ;  then  one  day  he  would  open  his  eyes 
suddenly,  reach  under  his  pillow  for  the  cat-o'-nine- 
tails, braid  a  fresh  scorpion  into  the  cracker,  stalk 
into  the  schoolroom,  and  walk  right  down  the  aisle 
to  the  very  fellow  who  had  drugged  him. 

I've  known  boys  to  go  out  and  hang  themselves, 
and  girls  to  take  Rough  on  Rats  for  the  com- 
plexion, just  to  escape  the  Monitor's  scourging  after 
he  had  been  asleep  for  fifteen  or  twenty  years.  He 
was  a  most  pitiless  tyrant.  I've  had  him  come  to  me 
when  I  wasn't  at  all  fit  for  punishment,  and  order 
me  to  take  off  my  jacket. 


OLD   TIME   AND    YOUNG   TOM 

"But,"  I  would  say,  "there  isn't  a  sound  place  on 
my  back  now ;  this  is  the  third  time  you  have  stood 
me  up  this  week." 

"Good!"  he  would  say.  "I'll  let  you  have  it  on 
the  raw  this  time !" 

Which  he  did.  When  I  would  howl,  "That's  on 
the  same  place  you  hit  before!"  he  would  answer 
grimly,  "That's  all  right ;  it's  for  the  same  thing." 

Memory  wasn't  a  mean  girl  at  all,  if  you  treated 
her  fairly.  She  would  tell  on  a  fellow;  there's  no 
denying  that.  She  was  the  girl  with  a  kodak.  She 
caught  everything  that  was  going  on.  She  had 
charge  of  all  the  reviews,  and,  as  I  said,  she  taught 
only  the  older  pupils.  She  would  come  to  the  dor- 
mitory sometimes,  sit  down  on  the  side  of  your  bed 
and  say,  "How  are  you  on  yesterday's  lessons?". 
And  then  you  would  run  them  over  together.  Yes- 
terday, in  that  school,  meant  any  time  the  other  side 
of  to-day,  whether  it  was  a  day  or  fifty  years  ago. 
She  would  open  her  album  and  look  over  the  pictures 
with  you — the  most  beautiful  pictures  you  ever  saw ; 
and  such  a  variety  of  sketches.  There  were  gray 
days,  with  the  mists  creeping  up  from  the  meadows 
116 


MY    KINDERGARTEN    OF    FIFTY    YEARS 

and  a  great  fog-bank  coming  in  from  the  sea ;  there 
were  days  when  the  slanting  rain  swept  down,  and 
bright  sunny  days — nobody  in  the  world  could  equal 
her  in  painting  sunshine. 

And  she  could  paint  sound,  too,  so  when  you 
looked  at  the  picture  you  could  hear  voices  that  you 
hadn't  heard  for  years  and  years ;  voices  of  children 
that  had  left  the  school  long,  long  ago ;  fragments  of 
old  songs  and  strains  of  sweet  music  that  melted 
your  heart.  She  was  just  like  other  girls — the  older 
you  grew  and  the  fewer  friends  you  had  left,  the 
poorer  you  became,  the  oftener  she  came  and  sat  be- 
side you,  the  more  tenderly  she  spoke,  and  the  fairer 
were  the  pictures  she  painted  for  you.  Then  little 
by  little  she  subdued  any  garish  tints  in  the  pictures ; 
anything  that  used  to  make  your  heart  bitter  and 
sour  she  painted  over  until  it  became  so  dim  that 
you  could  hardly  recognize  it;  even  the  gray  days 
she  made  beautiful. 

There  was  an  outside  Teacher  who  used  to  look 
after  the  pupils  who  ran  away  to  go  to  the  easier 
schools  where  they  could  do  as  they  pleased. 
Whether  they  intended  to  enter  his  school  or  not 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

they  always  did,  because  he  occupied  about  ail  the 
ground  adjacent  to  the  Kindergarten. 

The  old  fellow's  name  was  Experience.  He  had 
just  about  as  much  conscience  as  a  pistol.  He  car- 
ried a  long  goad,  with  a  brad  in  the  end  of  it  that 
would  bring  tears  to  the  eye  of  Cleopatra's  needle. 
He  had  a  set  of  rules  about  six  or  seven  thousand 
years  old.  He  never  compelled  a  fellow  to  obey 
him,  so  that  at  first  his  discipline  appeared  to  be  very 
lax,  and  easier  than  a  holiday.  He  posted  the  rules 
up  where  all  of  the  pupils  could  see  them  and  then 
said: 

"Now,  do  just  as  you  please  in  this  school ;  rejoice 
in  thy  youth,  and  let  thy  heart  cheer  thee  in  the  days 
of  thy  youth,  and  walk  in  the  ways  of  thine  heart, 
and  in  the  sight  of  thine  eyes;  but  know  thou,  that 
for  all  these  things — " 

And  by  and  by,  after  you  had  stepped  over  the 
mark  scores  of  times,  and  gone  outside  of  bounds 
oftener  than  you  could  remember,  and  had  gone 
around  the  hills  to  avoid  a  hard  climb,  the  first  thing 
you  knew  he  was  standing  right  in  the  path  before 
you. 

118 


MY    KINDERGARTEN    OF   FIFTY    YEARS 

He  never  smiled;  he  just  turned  you  around  and 
walked  you  back;  never  argued;  never  explained; 
never  scolded ;  just  walked  you  straight  back  to  the 
old  school,  with  never  a  throb  of  pity  and  never  a 
word  of  censure;  he  never  said,  "I  told  you  so."  If 
you  threatened  to  leave  his  school  he  only  replied, 
"Let's  see  you."  He  had  no  respect  for  anybody. 
I  have  seen  him  prodding  a  millionaire  and  a  beggar 
along  the  same  path  with  the  same  goad.  Once  he 
was  making  a  boy  who  had  run  away  from  the 
Kindergarten,  sign  a  receipt  for  a  quarter's  tuition  in 
his  school.  "Sign  here,"  he  said.  The  boy  was  one 
of  the  richest  pupils  in  the  school — so  rich  that  he 
was  on  the  point  of  tearing  down  his  barns  to  build 
greater;  so  rich  that  he  wasn't  going  to  work  any 
more,  nor  go  to  school  any  longer,  because  he 
couldn't  spend  all  his  money  if  he  threw  it  away  all 
the  rest  of  his  lifetime.  "Sign  right  here,"  said  old 
Experience,  and  that  fellow  had  to  sign  his  name, 
"F-o-o-1 — Fool,"  right  at  the  bottom  of  the  page. 

And  his  bills  are  something  terrific.  The  Kinder- 
garten is  free,  of  course,  but  I  know  one  boy  who 
paid  Experience  two  hundred  thousand  dollars  for  a 
119 


OLD  TIME  AND   YOUNG  TOM 

five-years'  course,  and  when  he  got  through  he  said 
he  hadn't  learned  one  solitary  thing  that  he  wasn't 
trying — harder  than  he  ever  tried  to  do  anything 
else  in  his  life — just  to  forget.  There  are  very  few 
children  who  get  through  the  Kindergarten  with- 
out taking  at  least  one  short  course  with  old  Ex- 
perience. 

One  thing  that  the  older  pupils  will  tell  you — and 
it  is  hard  for  the  younger  children  to  believe — is 
that  no  matter  how  preoccupied  the  Teacher  appears 
to  be,  nor  how  much  anarchy,  and  misconduct,  and 
injustice,  and  bullying,  and  disorder  he  seems  to 
permit  in  the  schoolroom,  he  sees  everything  that 
goes  on,  and  sees  it  all  the  time.  Sometimes  the 
record  is  not  read  out  in  the  school,  maybe  until  the 
events  have  been  over  and  the  class  dismissed  for  a 
hundred  years  or  more. 

There  was  some  comfort  in  the  certainty  that  in 
time  everything  would  have  its  right  name  in  the 
records  of  the  school,  and  every  fellow  would  be 
correctly  drawn;  wrongs  would  be  righted  and 
justice  would  be  done.  It  was  a  little  "worrisome" 
at  times,  when  you  reflected  that  your  own  record 
120 


MY    KINDERGARTEN    OF    FIFTY    YEARS 

was  just  as  carefully  and  truthfully  written  as  the 
others.  But  that  should  have  had  the  effect  of 
keeping  you  very  careful  about  your  record  while 
you  were  making  it.  Yet  there  have  been  instances 
where  pupils  have  wrought  and  schemed  every  day 
they  were  in  the  school  to  make  a  record  that  would 
read  like  blank  verse  as  they  read  it  themselves, 
which  in  one  short  day  after  they  left  would  be 
flatly  contradicted  by  the  chronicle  in  the  book.  I 
used  to  think  that  was  one  reason  why  some  of  the 
pupils  hated  so  to  leave  the  school. 

About  seventy  years  is  the  allotted  time  for  com- 
pleting the  full  course  in  the  Kindergarten,  although 
there  is  no  certainty  just  how  long  anybody  will  re- 
main in  the  school.  At  the  end  of  one's  term  the 
pupil  is  taken  out  and  sent  on  to  the  High  School. 
This  makes  little  gaps  in  the  school  here  and  there 
which  at  first  strike  you  with  more  or  less  sadness, 
but  as  you  become  once  more  absorbed  in  your  own 
work  you  scarcely  notice  the  vacant  places  unless 
they  are  close  to  you.  There  is  something  very 
pathetic  in  the  dog-eared  book,  lying  on  the  desk 
next  your  own,  with  the  dust  gathering  upon  it.  In 

121 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

a  few  days  you  ask  about  it,  and  you  are  told  that 
that  scholar  is  not  coming  back. 

It  may  possibly  happen  that  you  will  be  the  last 
one  of  your  class  to  be  called  up  for  promotion,  and 
in  that  case  the  schoolroom,  though  it  be  crowded  to 
the  doors,  becomes  a  very  lonesome  place  to  you, 
unless  you  have  kept  in  very  close  touch  with  the 
younger  classes.  You  see,  the  children  did  not  know 
any  of  the  scholars  about  whom  you  are  fond  of 
talking,  and  they  tire  of  hearing  you  tell  about 
people  whom  they  never  saw.  They  laugh  at  your 
obsolete  pronunciations,  and  imitate  your  stilted 
reading;  you  hear  them  speak  of  you  as  a  "back 
number" ;  you  begin  to  wonder,  after  a  while,  if  you 
have  been  forgotten.  But  that  never  happens. 

They  keep  a  Messenger  at  the  school  to  notify  the 
children  when  it  is  time  to  lay  aside  their  books.  He 
is  very  quiet,  very  soft- footed;  he  comes  and  goes  so 
silently  that  no  one  hears  him,  and  no  one  ever  sees 
his  face,  save  only  the  child  to  whom  he  speaks. 

The  Messenger  will  come  one  day  and  stop  at 
your  desk,  whispering  something  to  you  which  no 

122 


MY    KINDERGARTEN    OF    FIFTY   YEARS 

one  else  will  hear,  and  you  will  get  up  and  go  with 
him,  without  stopping  to  ask  permission,  for  the 
Teacher  sees  him,  and  this  is  all  understood.  You 
may  even  go  with  him  without  pausing  to  say  good- 
by  to  any  of  the  pupils.  And  the  next  day  the  chil- 
dren will  see  your  book  on  your  desk,  with  your 
spectacles  lying  in  the  place  where  you  were  reading 
when  the  Messenger  came  for  you.  They  will  miss 
you  for  a  few  days — your  desk  will  be  pointed  out 
for  a  little  while  to  the  new  pupils — your  sweet  old- 
fashioned  ways  will  be  commented  on  very  lovingly, 
if  you  have  made  yourself  lovable.  But  if  you  have 
been  disobliging  and  disagreeable  they  will  laugh 
when  they  see  your  vacant  chair,  and  say  how  glad 
they  are  that  you  are  gone  at  last. 

And  one  day  a  new  scholar  will  come  in  and  sit 
down  at  your  desk,  and  brush  all  your  old  books  out 
of  the  way.  And  the  buzz  and  hum  of  the  myriad 
voices,  the  laughing  and  crying,  the  singing  and  the 
quarreling,  the  work  and  the  play,  the  meanness  and 
the  goodness,  the  loving  and  the  hating,  that  are 
always  going  on  in  the  great  schoolroom,  will  drown 
123 


OLD   TIME  AND   YOUNG   TOM 

all  thought  of  you — save  in  the  loving  and  loyal 
hearts  that  will  never  forget  you — and  the  school 
will  enter  upon  another  term  with  new  classes. 

The  Monitor  will  walk  up  and  down  the  aisles; 
Memory  will  pause  by  this  desk  and  that;  the  Re- 
corder, silent  as  ever,  will  bend  over  his  big  book,  as 
though  he  saw  nothing  instead  of  everything,  writ- 
ing down  exactly  what  the  pupil  is,  without  making 
a  single  entry  concerning  what  he  seems  to  be;  the 
Teacher,  patient  and  gentle,  will  go  on  making  the 
lessons  as  clear  and  plain  as  they  can  be  made  to 
stupid  heads  and  unloving  hearts;  the  unseen  Mes- 
senger will  stand  in  the  door,  selecting  the  next 
pupil  for  promotion,  and  the  Kindergarten  will  go 
on  for  the  next  thousand  years  pretty  much  as  it  has 
gone  on  ever  since  the  sun  was  born.  Only,  it  will 
continue  to  be  different  from  all  other  schools  in 
one  particular  respect:  It  will  have  no  Alumni 
Associations.  Npne  of  the  graduates  ever  comes 
back. 


A  MINUTE  OF  TIME 

COLD  and  clear  it  was  on  the  morning  of 
January  first,  and  the  Jester,  who  had  drawn 
his  overcoat  over  his  motley,  bent  himself  against  the 
blast  that  played  with  the  jingling  bells  in  his  cap, 
and  made  his  way  to  the  lairs  of  those  who  sell 
diaries  and  calendars.  His  usually  careless  brow 
was  furrowed  with  rather  serious  reflections,  for  he 
had  found  a  flaw  in  the  welding  of  one  of  his  best 
and  strongest  Good  Resolutions,  young  as  the  day 
was,  and  he  was  wondering  what  would  become  of 
the  other  nine  by  the  time  the  sun  went  down.  He 
paused  before  the  oldest  house  in  the  world,  the  old 
established,  ever  reliable  monopoly  of  Time,  and 
read  the  familiar  bulletin  more  than  once  before  he 
entered  the  establishment. 

"Retail  dealer  in  Seconds,  Minutes  and  Hours; 

sole  manufacturer  of  Years  and  Centuries;  all  the 

Months  furnished  in  Season ;  Seed-time  looked  after 

and  Harvest  supplied  by  reliable  Dates ;  Rains  sup- 

125 


OLD  TIME   AND   YOUNG  TOM 

plied  for  all  occasions ;  liberal  reductions  to  Sunday- 
schools  and  Temperance  picnics;  Cold  Storage  for 
Yesterdays;  Birthdays  furnished;  Teeth  extracted 
while  you  wait;  Wrinkles  furnished  to  order.  Step 
in  and  examine  our  assortment  of  Bald  Heads  be- 
fore looking  elsewhere ;  Eyes  of  all  shades  fitted  to 
any  grade  of  Spectacles;  Anniversaries  to  order. 
Only  house  open  all  night  and  Sundays,  all  the  Year 
round;  all  cash  sales  or  long  credit  on  gilt  edge 
collateral;  a  salesman  to  every  customer;  nobody 
has  to  wait;  you're  next.  Sole  proprietor  of  the 
right  to  manufacture  Calendars  for  the  Solar 
System." 

This  seemed  to  be  about  the  place  the  Jester  was 
looking  for.  He  entered  and  said  to  the  Venerable 
Figure  standing  behind  the  counter,  carefully  ad- 
justing the  gage  on  a  tiny  hour-glass  that  had  evi- 
dently been  made  for  some  happy  child  to  play  with 
a  few  days : 

"A  Happy  New  Year !" 

Time  nodded  merrily,  and  the  Jester  went  on : 

"I  am  thinking  about  turning  over  a  New  Leaf 
this  year." 

126 


A   MINUTE   OF   TIME 

Time  laughed  till  the  fragile  little  hour-glass 
shook  in  the  strong  old  hands. 

"Are  you,  indeed,  my  son?"  he  said.  "I  knew 
that ;  small  need  for  you  to  come  here  with  that  in- 
formation. I  know  more  than  that — I  know  you 
are  going  to  turn  over  a  New  Leaf  whether  you  are 
thinking  about  it  or  not.  I  can  tell  you  more  than 
that,  too :  the  New  Leaf  is  going  to  be  turned  over 
for  you  anyhow,  without  the  slightest  regard  to 
your  intentions,  wishes  or  will;  that  is  a  thing  we 
shall  settle  for  you  right  here,  my  son,  without 
troubling  you  in  any  manner  concerning  the  trans- 
action. You  have  come  to  the  right  shop;  we  will 
turn  new  pages  for  you  every  day  this  year,  whether 
you  will  or  no;  what  you  write  on  them  is  your 
own  concern.  Here  is  your  diary  for  this  year — 
write  a  good  record  in  it  and  God  bless  you — and 
now  run  along;  other  customers  are  crowding  in, 
and  there  is  no  loafing  allowed  about  this  place." 

But  the  Jester  passed  out  slowly  and  listened  to 

the  busy  old  Chronologer,  as  he  welcomed  and  sped 

the  coming  and  going  customers  who  thronged  the 

establishment  and  kept  the  Hours  and  Minutes  and 

127 


OLD   TIME   AND    YOUNG   TOM 

other  attendants  moving  all  the  time  to  attend  to  the 
wants  of  humanity. 

A  young  man  elbowed  past  the  Jester,  and  as  he 
spoke  to  the  Maker  of  Calendars  the  Old  Man  called 
out: 

"Here,  Mr.  Twenty-one!  Have  this  young  gen- 
tleman's birthday  ready  at  once — stick  half  a  dozen 
more  hairs  in  his  upper  lip,  eyebrow  size — there  you 
are,  sir;  call  again  in  a  few  years  and  have  your 
voice  deepened.  What  can  we  do  for  you,  sir? 
Want  to  look  over  the  files  for  1844,  eh?  All  right; 
Mr.  Used-to-be,  show  the  gentleman  the  archives  of 
Greene  County  for  the  nineteenth  century.  Wait  on 
this  lady,  Mr.  Stop-watch ;  what  can  we  do  for  the 
lady?  'Your  thirty- fourth  birthday?'  Certainly; 
right  there  on  the  second  shelf  from  the  top,  Mr. 
Stop-watch;  in  that  decorated  box  marked  '49;' 
give  the  lady  a  few  of  these  hair-line  wrinkles  for 
the  corners  of  the  eyes — no,  no,  we  don't  send  them 
up ;  just  lean  over  the  counter  and  we'll  fit  them  on 
for  you,  dear;  there,  that's  lovely;  there's  a  nice 
frosty  kiss  for  you;  come  again  one  of  these  days 
and  have  your  hair  thinned. 
128 


A   MINUTE   OF   TIME 

"Good  morning,  sir,  a  Happy  New  Ye — Eh  ?  'You 
left  a  Yesterday  with  us  about  twenty-four  hours 
ago?'  Yes,  that's  right;  we  gave  you  a  receipt; 
stamped  it  on  your  memory.  'And  you  would  like 
it  back  again  ?'  Sorry,  my  dear  sir,  very  sorry,  but 
it's  against  all  the  rules  of  the  House.  Never  re- 
turned a  man  a  Minute  but  pnce  since  the  House  was 
opened,  and  that  was  to  a  king  named  Hezekiah, 
more  than  two  thousand  years  ago;  didn't  do  him 
a  bit  of  good,  either;  was  as  great  a  fool  after- 
ward as  he  was  before;  a  little  more  of  a  fool, 
if  anything.  Your  Yesterday  is  in  the  Cold  Storage 
Warehouse,  under  bond ;  can  show  you  some  excel- 
lent views  of  it,  if  you'd  like.  There  he  goes ;  usu- 
ally the  case;  when  they  want  it  back  they  don't 
want  to  look  at  it. 

"Mr.  Leisure — this  way,  a  couple  of  Hours  to  go 
around  the  block  with  this  Lazy  Boy;  charge  them 
up  against  him — they'll  never  come  back. 

"What   can   we   do    for  you,   sir?     'You   want 

time    enough    to    atone    for    the    foolishness    and 

wickedness  you  have  done  during  the  last  forty-one 

years'  ?  Oh,  well,  you  can  have  it,  but  you're  in  the 

129 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

wrong  shop;  go  straight  down  the  street  until  you 
come  to  the  other  House — right  on  the  corner  of 
Never  and  Forever — the  House  of  Eternity — 
they'll  fix  you  out  there;  we  don't  handle  time  in 
car  lots  at  this  House. 

"Well,  sir,  don't  crowd  if  you  are  in  a  hurry; 
there's  plenty  of  time  for  everybody  that  doesn't 
want  it  all — what  do  you  wish?  Oh,  you  'just 
want  to  know  what  time  of  day  it  is?'  Well, 
friend,  it's  just  about  scalping-time,  for  you. 
Here,  Mr.  Midway,  bring  your  scalping  knife  and 
fix  this  gentleman  out  for  the  orchestra  chairs — 
bend  your  head  a  little  bit  forward,  sir — I'll  hold 
his  ears  out  of  the  way,  Mr.  Midway,  and — swish ! 
slish!  There  you  are,  sir;  if  there  are  any  flies  on 
you  next  summer  you'll  know  it  before  anybody 
else;  come  against  next  year  and  we'll  let  a  V  in 
your  waistband. 

"Good  day  to  you,  sir,  what  can  we —  Ah,  yes  ; 
Mr.  Sexaginta,  this  gentleman  would  like  to  know 
if  'he  can  go  ahead  and  make  arrangements  for  his 
seventy-fifth  birthday?'  Sorry,  sir,  but  the  book- 
keeper tells  me  that  we  have  a  mortgage  to  foreclose 
130 


A   MINUTE   OF   TIME 

about  three  months  before  your  seventy-second ;  bet- 
ter put  your  house  in  order  and  take  your  papers 
down  to  the  other  House — we  turn  over  all  our  un- 
finished business  to  them.  Ha!  ha! 

"Here's  something  in  your  department,  Mr.  Fret- 
anworry ;  this  gentleman  wants  'to  be  kicked  into  the 
middle  of  next  week ;  has  an  acceptance  falling  due 
next  Monday  and  doesn't  know  how  to  meet  it;'  all 
right,  sir,  we've  got  a  Minute  in  your  account  some- 
where that  will  send  you  clear  into  Eternity,  if 
you — well,  he's  gone :  when  he  found  that  he  could 
get  what  he  wanted,  he  didn't  want  it. 

"And  what  is  your  business,  young  sir?  Ah! 
yes,  yes,  yes;  'your  father  has  left  you  fifty 
thousand  dollars  and  you  want  Five  Years  to 
run  over  to  Europe  and  see  the  world?'  And  you 
shall  have  them,  young  sir,  you  shall  have  them; 
just  sign  this  judgment  note  for  twenty  years — 
that's  right,  and  here  are  your  Five  Years — -'Pretty 
stiff  interest?'  Well,  we've  been  doing  business  at 
this  stand  for  thousands  of  years,  and  we've  dealt 
with  young  fellows  like  you  before;  we  may  com- 
pound the  interest;  can't  tell  yet — or,  if  you're  a 


OLD   TIME   AND    YOUNG   TOM 

good  boy  and  make  wise  use  of  the  capital,  we  will 
not  charge  you  any. 

"What's  here  ?  A  chubby- faced  schoolboy,  going 
home  for  the  holidays;  wants  to  know  'if  I  can't 
bring  To-morrow  along  this  Afternoon?'  Not  yet, 
little  man ;  call  around  about  forty  years  from  now, 
and  I'll  rain  To-morrows  down  on  you  so  fast  they'll 
take  your  breath  away  every  time  you  open  your 
mouth  to  shout 'Stop!' 

"Who's  this  ?  A  man  with  a  danger-signal  in  his 
cheek,  a  cough  like  a  minute  gun  in  his  lungs,  and  a 
fire  in  his  veins — 'wants  another  handful  of  sand  for 
his  hour-glass ;'  let  me  look  at  it,  dear  sir ;  too  bad ; 
just  about  run  out,  isn't  it?  And  sand  is  scarce  and 
high  this  year,  and — ah !  there  goes  the  last  grain — 
and  just  in  the  nick  of  time,  my  brother  Death  is 
backing  his  ambulance  up  at  the  door.  Take  him 
away  to  the  other  House,  down  the  street ;  he  has  no 
more  business  with  us. 

"And  what  is  your  wish,  sir?  Oh!  'you  are  go- 
ing to  be  hanged  in  the  morning  and  would  like 
a  night  six  months  long.'  Sorry,  good  man, 
but  we  haven't  changed  the  gage  of  the  ma- 
132 


A   MINUTE   OF   TIME 

chine  but  once  since  I  went  into  business;  we  did 
lengthen  a  day  for  Joshua,  but  then,  you  know,  he 
wasn't  going  to  be  hanged.  But  never  mind;  the 
other  House  will  furnish  you  a  night  as  long  as 
you  want,  immediately  after  the  hanging;  we  send 
them  a  great  deal  of  business,  sir ;  oh !  a  very  great 
deal  of  business,  although  they  never  reciprocate; 
no,  indeed,  we  never  get  a  customer  from  the  other 
House. 

"And  here  is  a  bright  young  fellow  now  who 
looks  as  though  he  might  have  a  prospector's  claim 
on  the  World  and  Time ;  and  what  do  you  want,  my 
boy?  Eh?  Well,  lean  over  and  whisper  it  then,  if 
you  are  so  timid — ha,  ha !  I  knew  you  didn't  want 
a  grizzled  old  graybeard  like  myself  to  wait  on  you; 
this  way,  Hope,  dear;  here's  a  young  springal  with 
all  the  blood  that  isn't  in  his  heart  burning  in  his 
cheeks  at  sight  of  you — he  wants  a  thousand  Prom- 
ises, all  in  sunny  tints;  let  him  have  them,  dear; 
you'll  find  them  loose  in  the  big  bin  with  the  Rain- 
bow clasps — let  him  have  as  many  of  them  as  he 
wants  and  charge  them  to  him ;  he's  good  for  them ; 
bid  him  God-speed  and  give  him  a  kiss,  dear,  that  he 
133 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

will  remember  when  he  is  a  white-haired  old  man — • 
God  bless  you,  my  boy ! 

"And  now — ah,  good  afternoon,  Grandpa;  and 
what  can  we  do  for  you  this  quiet  winter  day? 
Come  over  here  where  the  sun  shines  through  the 
south  window.  'You  would  like  to  look  at  Yester- 
day a  little  while?'  Certainly,  Grandpa,  certainly. 
Memory,  dear,  bring  Grandpa  the  stereopticon ;  sit 
down  by  his  side  and  turn  the  slides  for  him.  Come 
hither,  Wisdom,  my  quiet  daughter;  bring  the 
powder-box  with  you — now  sift  it  over  him  as  he 
bends  his  head  above  the  pictures  your  sister  is 
showing  him — gently,  gently — a  little  more  right 
here  at  his  temples;  don't  let  any  of  it  get  into  his 
eyes;  they  are  just  the  correct  shade  now,  soft  and 
tender  as  sunset;  sprinkle  it  thickly  on  the  top  of 
his  head — snow  it  down  gently — gently — that's 
right ;  now  on  his  beard ;  silver  it ;  there  is  no  snow 
falls  so  white  and  warm  as  that ;  that's  the  way — so 
softly  that  he  doesn't  notice  it;  there,  there,  that 
will  do;  there  is  a  crown  of  glory  and  honor  for  you, 
Grandpa.  And  here  is  a  nice  stout  stick  with  a  han- 
dle that  will  just  fit  your  old  hand ;  lean  hard  upon  it, 
134 


A   MINUTE   OF   TIME 

as  you  have  leaned  upon  the  Promises  all  the  days 
of  your  life;  just  one  moment  before  you  go — this 
way,  Mr.  Strongman,  put  the  tremolo  stop  on 
Grandpa's  knees,  and  bring  that  seventy-year-old 
stoop  for  his  shoulders — now  you  may  go,  Grandpa ; 
'go  out  to  the  gate,  through  the  city,  and  prepare 
your  seat  in  the  street ;  the  young  men  will  see  you 
and  hide  themselves;  the  aged  will  arise,  and  stand 
up ;  princes  will  refrain  from  talking  and  the  nobles 
will  hold  their  peace;  the  ear  that  hears  will  bless 
you,  and  the  eyes  that  see  will  give  witness  to  you' ; 
• — ah,  it  makes  the  Day  sweet  and  writes  the  Date 
in  gold  upon  the  Calendar  when  we  finish  a  piece  of 
work  like  that.  'So  teach  us  to  number  our  days 
that  we  may  apply  our  hearts  unto  wisdom':  ah, 
well—" 

Just  at  this  instant  the  gray  eyes  of  the  old  Maker 
of  Calendars  fell  upon  the  loitering  Jester,  and  he 
shouted : 

"What  in  the  name  of  all  the  Centuries  are  you 
loitering  around  here  for?  Quick,  Mr.  Indiansum- 
mer!  Bring  your  scalping  knife  and  the  Frost- 
sprayer!  One  of  you  Birthdays  hand  me  a  pair  of 
135 


OLD   TIME   AND    YOUNG   TOM 

spectacles  and  a  cane — I'll  fix  this  fellow  out  till  he 
looks  older  than  his  youngest  joke !" 

But  the  terrified  Jester,  skipping  nimbly  down  the 
crowded  street,  heard  the  voice  of  the  old  Chronolo- 
ger,  shouting  in  a  key  to  be  heard  all  around  the 
world : 

"All  out  for  Nineteen  Hundred  and  Past !  Every- 
body change!  All  aboard  for  Nineteen  Hundred 
and  Next!" 


FAVORITES 

A  DAY  or  two  ago  one  mail  brought  me  two 
letters,  one  from  Ohio  and  one  from  Ala- 
bama. The  letters,  mailed  on  the  same  day,  were 
twins  by  different  parents.  The  Ohio  man  asked  me 
to  send  him  "my  favorite  text"  in  the  Bible,  and  the 
girl  in  Alabama  wanted  me  to  tell  her  "my  favorite 
poem."  And  I  had  to  disappoint  both  of  them. 

For  how  do  I  know  my  favorite  poem?  A  man 
of  my  age!  Oh,  there  was  a  time  when  I  had  a 
favorite  poem,  and  a  favorite  author,  and  a  favorite 
friend.  I  am  not  going  to  tell  you  what  my  favorite 
poem  was.  "Because  you  would  laugh  at  me  ?"  Not 
by  a  long,  long  rope,  oh,  so  ready  young  friend.  But 
because  I  would  laugh  at  it.  And  that  would  hurt 
your  feelings.  Not  because  it  was  my  favorite  poem, 
but  because  it  is  yours  to-day.  That's  why  I  won't 
tell  you. 

I  rather  think  the  "favorite  days"  belong  to  youth. 
The  judgment  of  youth  is  so  much  more  nearly  in- 
137 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

fallible,  more  "rapid  fire  and  hair-triggery,"  so  much 
clearer,  stronger,  than  that  of  age.  Well,  if  that 
sounds  a  little  too  strong,  suppose  we  amend  by  strik- 
ing out  all  after  the  "y"  in  "triggery."  The  house 
will  accept  the  resolution  as  amended,  without  a  di- 
vision, I  think.  If  I  ask  a  venerable  sage  his  favor- 
ite author,  he  has  to  pause  and  think  a  long  time  over 
a  long,  long  list  of  lifelong  friends  who  have  sat 
with  him  through  the  experiences  of  half  a  century 
or  more.  He  hesitates  a  great  many  times  before  he 
speaks,  and  then  he  speaks  slowly  and  with  many 
qualifications.  But  if  I  ask  his  grandchildren,  the 
answers  are  as  ready  as  crickets  in  harvest.  It  is  a 
pleasant  happy  time  of  life.  Not  the  happiest,  pleas- 
antest,  or  best  time,  but  still,  it  is  very  delightful  as 
all  lifetime  is. 

Dear  me!  My  first  novel  was  Thaddeus  of 
Warsaw.  Did  I  read  it  clear  through?  Well, 
I  can  remember  one  passage  in  it.  On  one  oc- 
casion Thaddeus  came  near  to  getting  into  a  scrap 
over  some  affront  offered  to  his  boots.  Nothing 
came  of  it,  however,  and  I  made  up  my  mind  pri- 
vately that  Thaddeus  was  a  chump,  and  saved  my 
138 


FAVORITES 

young  life  by  declining  to  pursue  the  fortunes  and 
misfortunes  of  the  hero  any  farther.  My  sisters 
read  it,  however.  They  also,  one  of  them  at  least, 
read  The  Children  of  the  Abbey,  also  The  Wide, 
Wide  World.  I  did  most  emphatically  not.  I 
switched  off  on  Pilgrim's  Progress — the  edition 
with  the  good  old  wood-cuts,  and  I  think  I  have  read 
it  once  a  year  ever  since. 

An  aunt,  having  learned,  from  my  dear  mother's 
letters,  no  doubt,  what  an  extraordinarily  bright  and 
exemplary  boy  I  was  before  reaching  my  teens,  sent 
me  the  Memoir  of  John  Looney  Bead.  John  was  a 
holy  terror.  To  me,  at  any  rate.  It  is  just  as  well  that 
he  died  in  his  fifth  year,  after  he  had  been  preaching 
not  longer,  as  I  remember,  than  eighteen  months,  be- 
cause if  I  had  ever  met  that  remarkable  youth  I 
think  I  would  have  had  words  with  him,  anyhow. 
I  used  to  have  to  read  him,  Sundays,  when — and  it  is 
difficult  for  me  to  see  at  this  day  how  that  ever  hap- 
pened— I  had  been  bad.  And  I  didn't,  and  don't, 
believe  a  word  of  that  book.  Robinson  Crusoe, 
of  course,  I  did,  as  do  all  right-minded  boys.  But 
then,  that  is  a  book  anybody  might  easily  believe. 
139 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

Do  you  remember  The  Berber,  old  man?  And 
Moby  Dick?  They  came  later,  of  course,  but  I 
just  happened  to  think  of  them  as  my  mind  was  run- 
ning back  over  the  books  we  read  on  the  nursery  side 
of  thirteen.  There  was  another  book  used  to  be  laid 
upon  me  instead  of  the  rod,  when  I  had  performed 
certain  fantastic  tricks  before  high  Heaven  when  I 
was  reasonably  sure  that  nobody  else  was  looking 
and  Heaven  wouldn't  mind — or  at  least  wouldn't  tell 
on  me.  That  was  Tupper's  Proverbial  Philoso- 
phy. Had  to  read  it  to  my  father,  Sunday  after- 
noons. Had  my  choice  between  that  and  a  whip- 
ping. One  afternoon,  in  a  spirit  of  bravado  and 
experiment,  I  chose  the  whipping.  Got  'em  both'. 
And  you  old  boys,  of  my  own  age,  can  imagine  with' 
what  affectionate  reverence  I  regard  the  name  and 
memory  of  Martin  Farquhar  Tupper  even  unto  this 
day. 

But  one  day,  a  long  summer  afternoon,  prowl- 
ing about  in  the  attic  of  an  Illinois  farm-house,  I 
came  upon  an  old  hair  trunk,  locked,  and  full  of 
books.  You  could  smell  the  books.  And  the  lock: 
140 


FAVORITES 

told  what  manner  of  books  they  were.  It  didn't 
take  a  boy  long  to  unlock  a  panel  in  the  bottom  of 
that  trunk,  and  I  got  out  a  promising-looking  book 
with  red  covers.  It  was  better  than  its  promises — 
Wilkie  Collins'  Crock  of  Gold.  Smoke  of  the 
pit!  There  was  a  book  for  you.  I  sat  up  in  that 
room  and  read  until  the  garret  became  so  full  of 
evening  shadows  I  was  afraid  to  move.  You 
couldn't  smooth  my  hair  down  with  a  currycomb. 
It  might  have  broken  off,  but  that  was  all;  the 
stumps  would  bristle. 

Since  then  I  have  read  several  creepy  books. 
But  they  only  crawled,  in  comparison  with  that 
one.  I  have  never  seen  the  book  since.  And  I 
suppose  I  would  laugh  at  it  now.  It  was  not  only 
the  story,  but  the  boyhood;  and  the  long  dim 
room;  the  buzzing  mud-wasps  busy  with  their  ma- 
sonry in  the  rafters;  the  knowledge  that  I  had  no 
business  with  that  book  and  would  get  a  scold- 
ing with  frills  to  it  if  anybody  should  catch  me 
save  my  grandfather,  who  never  scolded  me  himself 
nor  permitted  any  one  else  to  do  so — that  made  the 
141 


OLD   TIME   AND    YOUNG   TOM 

book  what  it  seemed  to  be.  Well,  that  horrible  book' 
was  my  "favorite"  while  I  had  hold  of  it.  Or 
rather,  while  it  had  hold  of  me.  But  it  isn't  now. 

And  somebody  gave  me  a  "book  for  boys."  You 
recall  it,  I  guess.  It  was  Frank.  That  was  all; 
just  Frank.  He  never  had  any  other  name.  I 
think  he  had  nothing  but  a  front  name  and  an  uncle. 
Uncle  had  no  name  at  all.  He  was  just  "uncle." 
An  English  book,  of  course — all  our  juveniles  then 
were.  "Frank"  was  a  puzzle  to  me.  I  had  never 
heard  of  a  boy  who  remotely  resembled  any  type  of 
boy  that  would  faintly  remind  you  of  something  like 
him,  at  all.  I  really  enjoyed  the  book,  much  as  I 
enjoyed  algebra,  but  it  wearied  me,  trying  to  make 
out  what  manner  of  boy  "Frank"  could  have  been. 
I  have  never  been  able  to  decide  whether  he  was 
nine,  or  nineteen,  or  ninety  years  old.  There  was 
a  nine  in  his  age,  I  think,  and  on  some  pages  he  was 
one,  sometimes  the  other,  and  occasionally  all  three. 

There  was  a  colored  servant  in  the  book,  named 

Mungo,  I  think.     Perhaps  there  may  have  been  a 

negro — though  I  think  this  one  was  a  "blackamoor", 

whatever  that  is — named  Mungo,  but  I  never  be- 

142 


FAVORITES 

lieved  it.  Don't  yet.  He  spoke  a  mirth-provoking 
dialect.  Not  mirth-provoking  because  it  was  so 
funny,  but  because  it  wasn't  funny  a  little  bit. 

But  then  after  Frank  came  the  Rollo  Books. 
Blessed  old  Abbot!  His  name  should  be  spelled 
with  the  single  "t,"  and  he  deserves  a  halo  for  the 
Rollo  Books.  They  were  the  earliest  of  American 
juveniles  I  can  remember.  Mr.  Holiday  was  a  sort 
of  prig,  and  we  made  fun  of  his  preaching  habit,  but 
the  books  were  clean,  wholesome,  with  a  vein  of 
pleasant  easy  instruction.  I  was  a  boy  in  long  trous- 
ers when  I  first  read  a  Rollo  book.  Which  means 
that  I  was  much  younger  and  smaller  than  the  small 
boy  in  knickerbockers  to-day.  I  wore  a  tunic  that 
looked  like  my  sister's  shirtwaist  with  a  skirt  to  it. 
And  I  wore  a  cap.  Helmet  of  Hector — what  a  cap ! 
It  went  with  the  Rollo  books.  Rollo  wears  one  just 
like  it,  in  the  pictures.  It  was  a  circular  "mortar- 
board," with  a  visor.  And  a  tassel.  The  prettiest 
tassel !  Long ;  it  hung  down  to  touch  my  shoulder. 

The  first  day  I  wore  it  to  school  a  rude  boy  made 
no  end  of  fun  of  it,  and  pulled  it  like  a  bell  rope. 
I  ran  at  him,  pushed  him  with  both  hands,  and  he 
143 


OLD  TIME  AND   YOUNG   TOM 

fell  down.  It  was  my  first  fight,  and  I  was  vic- 
torious. I  ran  crying  to  the  teacher,  cold  with  the 
fear  that  I  had  killed  the  boy.  But  I  hadn't.  He 
lived  to  make  me  wish  that  I  had.  Then  after  the 
Rollo  books  came  the  Franconia  stories.  But  I 
think  perhaps  there  were  too  many  girls  in  them, 
and  Beechnut  never  did  measure  up  to  Jonas. 

Jonas  was  a  demi-god.  I  think  he  stands  as  the 
prototype  of  Riley's  Boy  Lives  on  Our  Farm.  To 
read  how  Jonas  straightened  a  nail  by  laying  it 
on  the  edge  of  an  ax  and  hammering  it  with  a 
hatchet,  was  a  revelation  in  the  science  of  man- 
ual training.  And  when,  finding  that  the  smoke 
blew  in  his  eyes,  he  built  the  fire  on  the  other 
side  of  the  log — that  was  little  short  of  magic. 
When  he  "chocked"  the  wagon  wheel  with  a  stone — 
that  was  Napoleonic.  And  then  when  he  drew  from 
his  pocket  the  very  bit  of  twine  that  was  needed — 
that  was  a  miracle.  With  wonder  I  admire  Edi- 
son. And  the  builder  of  the  Corliss  engine.  And 
the  architect  of  the  Brooklyn  Bridge.  And  the 
architects  of  the  World's  Fair^-there  never  was 
but  one. 


FAVORITES 

But  after  all,  Jonas  stands  in  a  class  by  him- 
self. To  this  day,  whenever  a  problem  in  do- 
mestic carpentry,  or  roofery,  or  locksmithing  con- 
fronts me,  there  rises  before  me  in  my  helpless- 
ness, as  I  set  about  to  perform  the  task,  the  figure  of 
little  Rollo,  with  wondering  eyes,  and  the  ready- 
fingered  Jonas,  pulling  "things"  out  of  his  inex- 
haustible pockets  and  doing  with  a  nail,  a  piece  of 
twine,  and  a  bit  of  wire,  what  I  am  trying  to  do 
with  a  plumber's  outfit,  blacksmith's  kit,  and  car- 
penter's tool-chest.  Jonas  was  the  father  of  all 
such  as  work  in  anything. 

But  how  about  my  favorite  book?  Well;  I 
don't  know.  Is  it  the  one  I  read  oftenest?  I 
read  Scott  and  Thackeray  oftener  than  any  other 
books  on  my  shelves,  but  I'm  not  at  all  sure  that 
they  stand  any  higher  in  my  favor  than  some  others. 
It  depends  on  my  own  mood,  and  the  weather,  and 
the  wind,  and  circumstances,  who  my  present  "fa- 
vorite" may  be.  To-day  "I  loaf,  and  invite  myself" 
with  a  fellow  who  will  grate  on  me  to-morrow. 
Won't  be  his  fault,  I  know,  but  I  can't  help  that.  I 
145 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

drop  my  work  this  morning  to  dream  over  a  poem 
for  which  I  shall  have  no  use  to-morrow. 

To  have  a  favorite  poem,  I  find,  is  usually  about 
as  enduring  as  these  marginal  notes  you  read  in  the 
old-fashioned  autograph  albums — "Remember  the 
day  on  the  boat."  Two  years  after  that  ink  is  dry, 
neither  the  owner  of  the  album  nor  the  writer  of  the 
memorial  will  have  the  slightest  memory  of  the  day 
or  the  boat,  and  they  will  jointly  wonder  to  what  the 
words  referred. 

I  Once  upon  a  time,  I,  in  the  days  when  I  had  as 
much  hair  on  my  head  as  I  have  wrinkles  on  my  face 
now,  wrote  in  a  girl's  album,  a  verse  of  hand- 
stitched  poetry,  with  a  welt  down  the  side  for  an 
acrostic,  and  on  the  corner  of  the  page  I  wrote, 
"Lemons."  How  we  laughed  over  that  "Lemons." 
How  we  laughed !  Oh,  how  we  did  laugh !  It  was 
too  all-killingly  funny  for  anything,  and  we  never, 
never  could  forget  that  word  and  all  that  it  called  up 
in  memory.  "Lemons" — oh,  ha,  ha,  ha,  he,  he,  he, 
ho,  ho,  ho!  "Lemons!"  Years  twice  twenty  have 
sped  since  then.  I  can  see  the  page,  and  I  can  see 
"Lemons"  written  crisscross  in  the  corner;  I  can 
146 


FAVORITES 

hear  our  laughter — there  were  half  a  dozen  of  us 
giggling  and  ha-haing  over  it — and  now,  just  for 
curiosity  I  would  give  a  dollar  if  I  could  call  up  the 
faintest  idea  of  the  vaguest  thing  that  "Lemons" 
refers  to. 

How  happy  it  is  to  be  young  and  giddy  and  a 
little  bit  soft,  and  pulpy,  with  a  heart  in  tune  for 
laughter  in  any  key  and  any  time,  and  a  memory 
about  as  long  as  a  sigh.  And  as  the  memory  grows 
longer,  life  is  dearer  and  better  and  brighter.  When 
it  gets  to  be  about  fifty  years  long — what  a  book  it 
is !  And  you  begin  to  think  how  blessed  it  will  be 
when  it  has  a  thousand  year-long  pages.  No,  chil- 
dren, I  have  no  favorite  poem,  and  no  favorite  au- 
thor. Not  now.  Used  to  have. 

Everybody  loves  old  books.  The  older  the  better. 
Children  of  five,  and  nine,  and  forty,  and  seventy 
years  love  best  of  all  the  stories  with  which  they  are 
most  familiar.  A  man  begins  life  with  one  book; 
the  shelves  expand  up  to  a  certain  climax,  then  they 
begin  to  wane,  until  at  last  he  goes  out  of  life  lean- 
ing upon  one  book — "the  Book"  he  has  learned  to 
call  it  by  that  time,  as  though  there  was  but  one  book 
147 


OLD   TIME   AND    YOUNG   TOM 

in  all  the  world  of  many  books.  For  we  love  best 
— always  we  do — the  book  and  the  story  which  tells 
most  about  our  own  experiences.  You  know  that, 
don't  you  ? 

When  I  was  a  boy,  I  was  much  given  to  enter- 
taining a  small  audience  of  my  brothers  and  sisters 
with  narratives  of  our  own  lives,  which  I  touched 
up  with  flesh  tints,  dark  eyebrows,  age-lines  and 
wigs,  as  the  dramatic  exigencies  and  the  taste  of 
the  audience  demanded.  And  "Tell  about  the 
time  the  skiff  upset  in  Kickapoo  Creek,"  the  "house" 
used  to  call,  as  the  winter  evening  wore  to  a  close, 
and  it  was  about  time  for  the  curtain  to  fall.  And 
they  listened  eagerly,  because  a  part  of  the  audience 
had  been  of  the  crew  of  the  ill-fated  craft,  which 
careened  and  "turned  turtle"  at  the  very  time  the 
captain  should  have  been  in  school.  They  listed 
to  the  story  of  how  the  captain  swam  ashore,  and 
waded  home  with  his  telltale  raiment  soaking  on  his 
shivering  frame,  and  how  the  blabbing  boots 
"squish-squashed"  on  his  feet  as  he  walked  into  the 
house  amid  the  unrehearsed  chorus  of,  "He's  been 
to  the  creek,  and  you  told  him  not  to!"  They 
148 


FAVORITES 

laughed  with  uncounterfeited  glee  as  the  narrator 
told  with  eloquent  pantomime,  how  he  had  prepared 
to  receive  the  punishment  of  the  rod  with  forty 
stripes  or  so,  plus  as  many  more  as  the  rod  would 
stand,  with  his  jacket  on,  and  how,  at  the  first 
whack,  the  soaking  jacket  had  sent  a  cloud  of  blind- 
ing and  chilling  spray  all  over  the  executioner  and 
the  shrieking  group  of  juvenile  spectators,  insomuch 
that  the  well-merited  castigation  broke  up  in  a  tu- 
mult of  laughter  and  commiseration,  and  the  cul- 
prit was  promptly  soused  into  a  hot  bath  and  rubbed 
down  and  fed  on  hot  things,  and  coddled,  and  the 
story  became  a  page  in  family  history. 

That's  the  way  books  are  made.  When  the  boy  is 
gray-haired  and  the  girl  has  locks  of  silver,  these  are 
the  stories  they  love,  the  tales  of  yesterday — the  real 
stories,  that  actually  happened  in  the  morning-time, 
when  the  world  was  young,  and  the  day  was  new; 
when  fairies  were  real,  and  ghosts  were  commoner 
than  electric  cars. 

How  much  of  your  own  life  is  a  story!  There 
isn't  much  theory  about  it.  It  isn't,  as  a  rule,  a  "mo- 
tive story".  There  are  a  few  years  of  "moralizing" 
149 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

in  it.  Some  happy  days  of  sentiment.  A  few  quiet 
starlit  hours  of  reflection.  Some  joyous  moons  of 
romance  and  poesy,  tender,  and  dear,  and  true. 
Some  thrilling  chapters  of  prophecy  and  hope  and 
ambition.  Now  and  then  comes  a  sun-crowned  day 
of  rapture  and  exaltation.  Once  in  a  while  a  storm- 
swept  day  followed  by  a  starless  night.  Now  and 
then  a  day  bitter  with  defeat — somewhere  or  other 
that  chapter  always  comes  in. 

So  every  day  the  story  you  children  are  writing 
goes  on  and  on.  Every  day  there  is  action.  Every 
day  you  do  something;  go  somewhere;  plan  some- 
thing; see  somebody.  You  live,  and  you  love,  and 
you  suffer.  You  lay  careful  plans  and  they  work  out 
perversely  and  wretchedly  wrong.  You  build ;  then 
fire,  or  cyclone,  or  earthquake  shock  topples  down 
the  house  of  cards,  smites  into  ruins  the  castle  in 
Spain.  And  how  the  action  in  your  story  interests 
the  readers!  People  who  don't  care  a  straw  what 
you  think  or  say,  will  lose  a  whole  precious  morning 
watching  through  a  chink  of  a  half -turned  shutter 
slat,  to  see  what  you  are  "doing".  You  know  that. 
People  who  don't  want  your  moralizing,  your  ser- 
150 


FAVORITES 

monizing,  your  theorizing,  are  intensely  interested  in 
the  action  of  your  story  as  you  develop  it  before 
them. 

You  don't  care  a  cent  what  your  most  Christian 
neighbor  thinks  about  cats.  She  would  bore  you  to 
death  if  she  should  come  over  some  day  and  give 
you  her  "views"  on  cats.  But  if  you  should  see  her 
come  out  of  her  house  some  morning  when  you  were 
so  busy  you  hadn't  time  to  breathe,  carrying  a  cat 
in  one  hand  and  a  baseball  bat  in  the  other,  you 
would  drop  book,  broom,  or  sewing,  and  never  leave 
the  window  until  you  knew  what  she  was  going  to 
do — nay,  until  you  knew  what  she  had  done  with 
that  cat.  And  when  you  told  about  it  afterward, 
you  would  not  go  into  a  metaphysical  investigation 
of  her  motives  for  dealing  with  the  cat  as  she  did. 
You  would  tell,  with  appropriate  gesticulation  and 
dramatic  emphasis  what  you  saw  her  do.  Now,  to 
make  your  life  story  interesting,  you  must  put  a 
great  deal  of  action  into  it. 

But  I've  nearly  forgotten  the  man  who  is  waiting 
to  hear  my  favorite  text.  Well,  that  depends.  When 
the  day  is  raw  and  bleak  and  rainy,  I  want  a  cloak, 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

warm  and  storm-proof,  and  I  snuggle  into  it  and 
draw  it  around  me  like  a  "garment  of  praise". 
When  the  day  is  bitter  cold,  the  sunny  side  of  a 
great  rock,  with  the  outlook  to  the  south  is  my  fa- 
vorite, and  "the  Rock  that  is  higher  than  I"  is  my 
shelter.  When  the  way  of  the  pilgrimage  is  dusty 
and  hot,  I  love  a  shaded  path  close  beside  the  wind- 
ings of  the  river;  I  love  to  hear  the  murmur  of  "the 
fountain  of  living  waters." 

.When  I  am  hungry,  a  little  passing  shower  of 
manna  pleases  me  as  well  as  anything,  with  the 
promise  of  the  "hidden  manna"  in  the  day  of  over- 
coming. When  I  am  filled — "the  full  soul  loatheth 
the  honeycomb,"  and  a  little  exercise,  such  as  climb- 
ing the  Hill  Difficulty  or  running  with  patience  a 
hard  sprint  in  the  race  that  is  set  before  me  is  good 
for  me.  When  I  am  tired,  I  long  for  an  arbor  of 
rest — I  want  to  "lie  down  in  green  pastures",  until 
my  soul  is  restored.  Going  down  the  dangerous 
slopes  I  want  a  pilgrim's  staff  upon  which  to  lean. 
When  there  are  giants  in  the  way,  I  want  a  sword — 
"a  right  Jerusalem  blade,"  and  some  One  to  "teach 
my  fingers  to  fight." 

152 


FAVORITES 

Sometimes  I  am  faint-hearted  and  frightened, 
then  I  want  a  bugle  blast  that  will  stiffen  the  sinews 
of  my  soul,  like  the  trumpet  of  Gideon.  Then  another 
day  I  have  fallen  among  thieves,  and  I  am  sore 
hurt,  and  I  need  words  that  are  healing  balm.  One 
time  I  need  to  be  coaxed ;  the  next  day  I  have  to  be 
commanded.  To-day  I  must  be  restrained  and  feel 
the  pull  of  the  rein  and  the  grip  of  the  curb.  To- 
morrow I  must  have  whip  and  spur.  On  my  stupid 
days  I  must  be  patiently  enlightened — "line  upon 
line,  precept  upon  precept."  On  other  days  when 
I  know  too  much,  I  must  be  cautioned  and  reproved. 

My  favorite  text  ?  Oh,  my  children,  you  might  as 
well  ask  me  which  is  my  favorite  eye.  Whichever 
one  I  might  happen  to  lose,  of  course.  Which  is 
your  favorite  finger?  The  thumb  with  the  felon  on, 
to  be  sure.  That's  the  one  everything  hits  and  its 
the  one  you  seem  to  want  to  use  the  oftenest. 
"Should  you  not  select  and  love  a  favorite  text, 
then  ?"  Oh,  by  all  means ;  yes,  a  text  that  is  a  guid- 
ing star,  a  help  in  times  of  need,  a  text  that  appeals 
to  you  with  peculiar  sympathy  and  strength.  A  fa- 
vorite text  ?  Indeed,  yes.  Have  a  thousand  of  them. 


"ROUNDED  WITH  A  SLEEP" 

OH,  it  was  a  Jolly  Porter  on  the  Sleeping  Car 
that  sailed, 

Blow  high,  blow  low,  and  so  sailed  he  I 
And  forever  in  the  wake  of  the  Traveler  he  trailed, 
As  he  cruised  along  the  berths  so  easilee ! 

"Look  aloft,  look  aloft !"  now  the  Jolly  Porter  cried, 
Blow  high,  blow  low,  and  so  sailed  we ; 

And  the  Traveler  looked  aloft,  and  "Upper  Ten"  he 

spied, 
As  he  cruised  along  the  aisle  so  wearilee. 

"I  see  nothing  of  the  pillow,  I  see  nothing  of  the 

sheet," 

Blow  high,  blow  low,  and  so  groaned  he  ; 
"But  I've  struck  a  basswood  blanket,  with  a  bolster 

at  my  feet," 
And  he  climbed  into  his  berth  distractedlee. 

"Oh,  arise ;  now  arise !"  the  gallant  Porter  cried, 

Blow  high,  blow  low,  and  so  sailed  we ; 
"It  is  four  o'clock  A.  M.,  and  you  have  ninety  miles 

to  ride, 

But  I  want  to  make  my  berths  up  now,"  said  he. 
154 


"ROUNDED   WITH   A   SLEEP" 

"Avast,  there;  avast!"  then  the  Traveler  grumbled 

he, 

Blow  high,  blow  low,  and  so  sailed  we ; 
"How  can  I  get  up  at  four,  when  I  went  to  bed  at 

three?" 
But  the  Porter  bounced  him  out  most  grace fulee. 

"Now,  all  hands  ahoy!"  then  the  grim  conductor 

said, 

"Show  up,  show  up  your  checks!"  cried  he; 
But  the  checks  of  identification,  they  had  lost  them 

in  the  bed, 
As  they  cruised  about  the  gorgeous  P.  P.  C. 

"These  are  not  my  patent  leathers,"  then  the  weary 

Traveler  wailed, 

Blow  high,  blow  low,  and  so  roared  he ; 
"Yours  were  taken  by  the  pirate  down  in  Lower 

Three  that  sailed," 
And  the  gallant  Porter  laughed  most  merrilee. 

Now   for   "Quarter!     Oh,    Quarter!"   the   Porter 

loudly  cried, 

"Blow  in,  blow  in !"  and  so  brushed  he ! 
But  the  Quarter  that  we  gave  him  had  a  blow-hole 

in  its  side, 

As  we  sailed  into  the  station  by  the  sea. 
155 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

Now,  all  ye  Jolly  Porters,  a  warning  take  from  me, 
"Make  mine  up  first,"  and  so  sail  we! 

Or  they'll  nail  "No  Quarter"  to  the  mast  when'er 

they  go  to  see 
Who  is  cruising  in  the  plush-lined  P.  P.  C. ! 

I  am  a  good  sleeper.  "Sleep,  that  knits  up  the 
raveled  sleeve  of  care,"  has  a  steady  contract  to  do 
all  my  knitting  while  I  slumber.  And  I  will  admit 
that  I  am  pretty  hard  on  my  sleeves.  I  have  a  very 
small  brain  power,  and  as  I  work  it  up  to  its  full 
capacity,  making  the  gage  show  "a  hundred  and 
enough"  all  the  time  I  am  awake,  my  intellectual 
and  nervous  faculties  are  frayed  at  the  cuffs,  out 
at  the  elbows,  and  pretty  well  strained  at  the  shoul- 
der seams  when  bedtime  comes.  And  when  "Na- 
ture's soft  nurse"  sits  beside  my  pillow,  it  is  a  very 
tender  lullaby  to  listen  to  her  gentle  sigh  as  she 
takes  up  my  "raveled  sleeve,"  turns  it  over  in  sweet- 
despairing  mother  fashion  to  find  the  most  hopeful 
place  of  beginning,  and  then  the  muted  diminuendo 
of  her  clicking  needles  whispers  to  me,  "It  will  be 
all  right  in  the  morning."  That  is  the  only  medicine 
to  take. 

156 


"ROUNDED    WITH    A    SLEEP" 

I  used  to  be  foolish  enough  to  go  to  bed  to 
patch  my  own  sleeves.  To  lie  awake  through  the 
sweet  blessed  hours  of  darkness  and  silence  to  be 
sorry  for  the  things  that  I  had  done  the  day  before, 
and  to  fear  for  the  things  that  might  be  done  to  me 
the  coming  day.  To  grieve  for  the  day  that  was 
dead,  and  to  dread  the  day  to  be  born.  And  when 
I  came  to  myself  I  said,  "If  there  is  neither  joy  in 
the  birthday  or  triumph  in  the  death-bed,  what  good 
is  there  in  life?"  And  I  quit  it.  And  learned  at 
forty  what  every  child  knows  at  five — how  to  go 
to  sleep.  Learned  what  every  human  being  knows, 
until  it  is  educated  out  of  him.  Learned  what  any 
baby  knows. 

Why,  about  half  our  education — if  ever  we  are 
educated — consists  in  unlearning  the  things  we  have 
taught  ourselves,  and  getting  back  to  the  old  things 
we  used  to  know  so  well  before  we  ever  knew  any- 
thing. "When  I  became  a  man,"  said  the  great 
Apostle,  "I  put  away  childish  things."  That  is 
right.  But  the  trouble  with  most  of  us  is  that  we  do 
not  put  away  the  "childish  things" ;  we  put  away  the 
eternal  things  of  childhood.  And  one  of  the  things 
157 


OLD   TIME   AND    YOUNG   TOM 

is  the  perfect  Trust  that  leads  to  our  pillow  when 
most  we  need  him — 

"Care-charmer  Sleep,  son  of  the  sable  Night, 
Brother  to  Death,  in  silent  darkness  born." 

I  once  was  as  foolish  about  lying  awake  "and  see- 
in'  things  at  night"  as  you  are.  And  when  I  tried 
to  break  myself  of  the  evil  habit,  I  medicined  my- 
self with  all  the  absurd  suggestions  of  men — count- 
ing up  to  a  million;  watching  an  endless  line  of 
sheep  jump  over  an  eternal  rail;  counting  the  ticks 
of  the  clock;  watching  myself  go  to  sleep — all  these 
things,  so-called  aids  to  sleep,  which  are  but  subtle 
inventions  of  the  devil  for  keeping  men  awake  until 
they  go  mad.  And  what  did  I  do  at  last  ?  Did  what 
any  sensible  man — anybody  on  earth  except  myself 
would  have  done — well,  say,  to  be  sure  of  it,  should 
have  done  in  the  first  place — just  went  to  sleep. 

When  a  man  in  Los  Angeles  wants  to  go  to  Pasa- 
dena— and  what  man  is  there  on  earth  who  does  not 
want  to  go  to  Pasadena? — he  does  not  deliberately 
map  out  a  wrong  route,  leading  to  somewhere  else, 
say  to  Santa  Barbara  or  San  Diego,  and  say  within 
158 


"ROUNDED   WITH   A   SLEEP" 

himself,  "Now,  this  is  just  as  wrong  as  it  can  be, 
but  by  starting  wrong,  and  asking  my  way  at  every 
cross-road,  and  being  set  right  by  obliging  natives,  I 
will  eventually,  after  many  turns  and  much  counter- 
marching and  intricate  tacking,  reach  Pasadena." 
He  just  goes  to  Pasadena  the  Blessed  by  the  most 
direct  way.  If  I  wish  to  sit  down,  I  say  "I  will  sit 
down,"  and  do  sit  down.  And  when  I  want  to  go 
to  sleep,  I  go  to  sleep.  When  I  am  hungry  I  do  not 
go  into  the  sheep-raising  industry  in  order  to  get  a 
mutton  chop,  and  I  do  not  sow  a  wheat  ranch  to 
get  a  loaf  of  bread.  I  go  to  the  dining-room  and 
get  something  to  eat.  And  when  I  want  to  sleep,  I 
do  not  begin  on  some  arithmetical  problem  that  will 
keep  me  awake  until  I  fall  asleep  from  exhaustion. 
Sometimes  I  want  to  eat  between  meals.  Then  I 
do  not  go  to  the  dining-room.  I  go  to  the  kitchen 
and  browse.  And  sometimes  I  want  to  go  to  sleep 
between  "sleeps."  Then  any  nook  with  cosy-looking 
"curling-up"  or  "stretching-out"  place  in  it  is  good 
as  a  bed.  Sleeping  is  as  easy  as  it  is  natural,  when 
once  you  reacquire  the  lost  art  of  achieving  slumber 
at  will.  Sleep  is  a  restorative,  a  tonic,  a  stimulant — 
159 


OLD   TIME   AND    YOUNG   TOM 

it's  everything.  Sometimes  when  things  get  hope- 
lessly tangled  up;  inextricably  snarled,  I  scoop  a 
handful  of  things  off  my  desk,  throw  them  into  the 
fireplace — if  I  threw  them  into  the  waste-basket,  you 
see,  I  might  afterward  be  tempted  to  dig  them  out 
and  begin  the  snarl  all  over  from  a  new  starting- 
point  of  entanglement — make  a  plunge  for  the  near- 
est "wallow"  of  pillows  and  cushions — the  house  is 
a  perfect  ocean  of  them — and  sleep  for  ten  or  fifteen 
minutes.  I  awake,  and,  lo,  "a  new  Heaven  and  a 
new  earth."  "You  are  so  busy,"  you  say,  "that 
you  can't  afford  to  sleep  in  the  daytime."  Well, 
mebbeso,  yes.  I  am  so  busy  I  can't  afford  to  waste 
a  precious  minute  of  my  "sleep  medicine"  in  staying 
awake.  Sometimes  the  worst  and  wickedest  use — : 
or  misuse — to  which  a  busy  man  or  woman  can  put 
time,  is  to  waste  it  in  wake  fulness. 

Sleeping  in  church  is  a  most  unsatisfactory  nap, 
the  one  you  catch  between  the  text  and  "seventhly". 
No  one  denies  the  delicious  sense  of  languor  that 
assails  the  weak  and  weakening  flesh  with  soft  ap- 
proaches, when  the  morning  is  sultry,  the  sermon 
lukewarm,  the  meeting-house  hermetically  sealed, 
1 60 


•   "ROUNDED    WITH    A    SLEEP" 

and  the  preacher  nearly — well,  let  us  be  fair,  and 
say  about  half  as  stupid  as  the  listener.  But  you 
have  a  shamefaced  sense  all  the  time  that  the  eye  of 
the  minister  is  upon  you,  and  let  me  say  for  your 
comfort  that  you  are  correct — it  is.  He  sees  the 
first  haze  of  temptation  that  creeps  over  your  face — 
the  dull,  fishy,  isinglass,  lack-luster  glaze  that  veils 
your  open  eyes;  the  nodding  head  that  catches  itself 
from  time  to  time,  the  stern  resolve  to  keep  awake 
if  it  kills  you  that  now  and  again  asserts  itself,  your 
appealing  look  at  a  sealed  window  with  a  million 
acres  of  fresh,  invigorating,  soul-reviving  air  just 
outside  the  thickness  of  a  pane  of  glass,  and  he  sees 
you  at  last  go  down  like  a  tired  swimmer  in  sight 
of  land  that  he  can  not  reach. 

How  happy  you  are  when  the  fitful  and  unequal 
struggle  is  over,  and  the  sleep  of  the  sanctuary  "cov- 
ers you  all  over  like  a  cloak",  save  that,  unlike  a 
cloak,  it  does  not  conceal  the  sleeper.  There  is  a 
short  eternity  of  such  happiness  as  comes  in  perfec- 
tion only  to  the  clam ;  somebody  prods  your  ribs  with 
a  warning  elbow;  you  open  your  eyes  to  behold  a 
little  widening  circle  of  smile-ripples,  and  then  you 
161 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

know  that  you  have  dropped  into  the  calm  and  blessed 
holy  silence  of  the  hour  a  pebble-snore  or  two.  But 
always  you  are  equal  to  one  thing ;  by  some  inexpli- 
cable instinct  your  eyes  rest  upon  a  worshiper,  who 
has  never  been  known  so  much  as  to  wink  an  eye 
during  divine  service,  in  forty  years  of  attendance, 
and  you  fix  upon  this  exemplary  one  a  reproachful 
gaze  as  who  would  say,  "You  ought  to  be  ashamed 
of  yourself!"  And  then  you  are  awake;  penitent, 
ashamed,  irritated,  and  all  the  way  home  you  lay  all 
the  blame  for  your  slothfulness  on  the  preacher. 

This  habit  of  slumbering  in  the  sanctuary,  far  less 
common  now  than  in  the  days  of  serial  sermons  in 
one  volume,  has  long  been  a  grief  to  the  preacher. 
Good  Robert  Hall,  in  a  sermon  on  Hearing  the 
Word,  said,  "The  practise  of  sleeping  in  places  of 
worship,  a  practise  we  believe  not  prevalent  in  any 
other  places  of  public  resort,  is  most  distressing  to 
ministers  and  most  disgraceful  to  those  who  indulge 
in  it.  If  the  apostle  indignantly  inquires  of  the  Co- 
rinthians whether  they  had  not  houses  to  eat  and 
drink  in,  may  we  not,  with  equal  propriety,  ask  those 
who  indulge  in  this  practise  whether  they  have  not 
162 


"ROUNDED   WITH   A    SLEEP" 

beds  to  sleep  in,  that  they  convert  the  house  of  God 
into  a  dormitory?" 

Which  leads  us  to  wonder  why  it  is,  when  one- 
third  of  a  man's  life  is  passed  in  bed — more  than 
that,  when  we  add  to  the  hours  of  regular  sleep,  his 
days  of  illness  and  extra  hours  of  laziness,  when  so 
much  of  a  man's  life  is  lived — or  slept,  in  bed,  that 
he  does  not  pay  more  attention  to  devising  the  most 
perfectly  comfortable  beds  that  art  and  science  and 
mechanical  skill  can  make  for  him?  Anything  on 
which  you  can  lie  down  and  get  to  sleep  isn't  a  bed. 
Many  beds  appear  to  be  constructed  with  the  sole 
design  and  purpose  of  preventing  sleep.  How  many 
bed-heads  should  be  inscribed  with  the  name,  "Mac- 
beth." I  have  slept  in  them  all  the  way  from  Hali- 
fax to  San  Diego.  Some  of  them,  the  mere  memo- 
ries of  them,  will  make  me  snore,  and  some  will 
make  my  bones  to  ache  like  a  convention  of  two 
hundred  and  forty-eight  delegates  of  pains,  pangs 
and  penalties. 

"The  Cobblestone  Mat"  is  a  composite  bed.  The 
epidermis  is  woven  of  material  like  ordinary  bed- 
ticking,  save  that  it  is  practically  indestructible.  It 
163 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

is  lined  with  corn  husks,  unhaggled,  with  bits  of  the 
stalk  left  on  to  hold  the  husks  together.  Occasion- 
ally, a  whole  cob  is  put  in,  but  this  is  seldom  discov- 
ered in  a  perfect  state,  being  broken  into  pipe-size 
lengths  by  the  agonized  struggles  and  tossings  of 
successive  generations  of  sufferers,  who  have  been 
stretched  upon  this  ancient  rack.  There  are  a  few 
not  very  well  authenticated  narratives  of  bottle 
necks  having  been  discovered  in  the  upholstering — . 
it  is  called  "upholstering"  by  the  trade — of  this  bed. 
George  Washington  Selkirk,  of  Texas,  the  well- 
known  traveler  for  the  Barb  Wire  distillery  (which 
you  may  remember  placed  upon  the  market  as  its 
sole  and  exclusive  product  a  non-intoxicating  and 
non-alcholic  brandy  distilled  from  native  cactus  and 
pine  knots ;  used  for  taking  grease  stains  out  of  old 
furniture,  and  quite  popular  in  the  arid  regions  as 
a  harmless  and  innocent  beverage — for  the  people 
born  there J  tells  in  the  January  number  of  the 
Workman  at  Sleep,  of  discovering  a  whole  bottle  of 
the  product  of  his  own  house  in  one  of  these  beds,  in 
Beebe  county,  in  which  he  was  reducing  himself  to 
164 


"ROUNDED   WITH   A   SLEEP" 

a  condition  of  anatomical  callosity.  He  reported 
the  fact  to  the  landlord,  and  they  procured  an  ax 
with  which  to  cut  through  the  bed-ticking  and  ex- 
tricate the  bottle. 

But  by  a  sad  chance  they  broke  the  bottle,  which 
instantly  set  fire  to  the  bed,  and  Mr.  Selkirk  and  the 
landlord  barely  escaped  with  their  lives.  The  hotel 
was  burned  to  the  ground,  and  most  of  the  bed, 
with  the  exception  of  the  "upholstery,"  was  con- 
sumed in  the  conflagration,  with  a  loss  of  life  that 
has  never  been  overestimated.  The  sad  affair  cast  a 
gloom  over  the  entire  community  for  several  days. 
We  were  unable  to  learn  the  name  of  the  landlord. 
If  one  is  confined  for  an  entire  night  in  a  "Cobble- 
stone Mat,"  the  best  way  to  pass  the  time  is  to  slide 
the  cobs,  husk-ganglia,  broken  door-knobs  and  other 
items  of  the  upholstery  from  place  to  place — the 
atoms  move  quite  easily  among  themselves,  until  a 
fairly  level  foundation  has  been  graded.  Then  take 
out  the  bottoms  of  all  the  bureau  drawers,  and  with 
the  addition  of  the  bed-slats,  which  may  be  removed 
for  that  purpose,  a  very  good  floor  may  be  laid  on 
165 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

this  grading,  upon  which  any  one  with  a  cast-iron 
frame  may  rest  quite  comfortably  until  it  is  time  to 
get  up  and  change  your  position, 

"The  Kopje"  is  one  of  the  most  ancient  forms  of 
beds.  It  is  lined  with  five  hundred  pounds  of  goose 
feathers,  usually  in  a  fair  state  of  preservation.  It 
is  made  up  in  the  shape  of  a  cone,  slightly  truncated. 
It  is  reached  by  climbing  the  headboard  of  the  bed, 
and  jumping  over.  Viewed  from  the  door  of  the 
room  as  you  enter,  it  looks  like  an  everlasting  moun- 
tain. After  you  have  alighted  in  it,  it  appears  like 
an  active  volcano,  interior  view.  A  great  many 
people  have  gone  to  bed  in  the  Kopje  by  their  own 
unaided  efforts.  But  there  is  no  case  on  record 
where  anybody  ever  got  out  of  one  without  assist- 
ance from  without.  The  pillows  are  two  sizes 
larger  than  the  bed. 

Summer  or  winter  there  are  no  covers  to  a  Kopje. 
There  is  one  sheet,  thin,  but  narrow.  This  you  find 
twisted  and  tangled  around  your  neck  when  you 
awake  in  the  morning.  For  covering  during  the 
night,  the  bed  foams  over  you,  flows  in  on  you,  sur- 
rounds, enswathes,  engulfs,  smothers,  and  holds  you 
1 66 


"ROUNDED   WITH    A    SLEEP" 

in  its  writhing  and  feathery  folds.  The  Kopjes  in 
America  are  imported.  There  is  a  bill  before  Con- 
gress to  establish  a  tariff  to  protect  and  foster  an 
infant  industry  for  the  manufacture  of  Kopje  beds, 
but  some  one  added  a  rider,  providing  also  for  the 
protection  of  the  people  who  would  have  to  sleep 
in  them,  and  that  killed  the  bill  in  committee.  That 
was  the  year  in  which,  as  you  may  not  remem- 
ber, Owgoost  Schnauffellseiengehausenschrifft  was 
chairman  of  the  Ways  and  Means  Committee. 

"The  Incline"  bed  is  common  and  half-popular 
throughout  the  great  Middle  West.  It  is  higher  at 
the  other  end;  and  it  doesn't  make  any  difference 
which  way  you  sleep,  that  is  the  foot  of  the  bed. 
The  bed  is  very  carefully  surfaced,  so  as  to  ex- 
pedite, for  the  occupant,  the  process  of  sliding  him- 
self together.  In  order  to  prevent  the  brains  from 
running  entirely  into  the  head  and  out  at  the  ears, 
the  incline  is  always  provided  with  a  three-sided 
bolster,  a  foot  high  at  the  wide  side,  narrowing 
down  and  terminating  in  a  ridgy  seam,  which  fits 
under  the  shoulder-blades.  The  bolster  is  uphol- 
stered with  straw,  packed  in  by  hand  with  a  steel 
167 


OLD  TIME   AND   YOUNG  TOM 

tamping  rod,  same  as  they  pack:  a  horse  collar.  It 
is,  however,  much  harder  than  a  horse  collar,  al- 
though not  nearly  so  smooth. 

If  you  keep  the  bolster  in  bed,  and  try  to  sleep 
with  it  under  your  head,  you  will  break  in  two.  If 
you  throw  it  out  on  the  floor,  the  bolster  will  break. 
After  it  has  been  hurled  out  a  great  many  times, 
it  is  broken  into  so  many  joints  that  it  feels  like 
a  dog  chain.  In  rare  instances,  the  incline  is  made 
so  as  to  slant  from  the  side  of  the  bed,  instead 
of  from  the  other  end.  But  this  is  not  popular  with 
the  hotels  who  use  the  incline,  because,  then,  the 
guest  merely  slides  off  the  bed  on  the  floor,  and 
finding  how  much  more  comfortable  it  is  than  the 
bed,  he  continues  to  sleep  there  during  his  sojourn 
at  that  hostelry,  thereby  getting  the  sleep  he  has  paid 
for,  and  reducing  the  profits  of  the  house. 

One  might  go  on  and  enumerate  a  score  of  other 
breeds  of  beds,  but  the  reader  will  readily  add  to  the 
list  many  unclassified  beds  that  dwell  within  his 
memory  yet  already.  There  is  "The  Hammock." 
This  is  merely  a  plain,  woven-wire  mattress,  which 
in  fifteen  or  twenty  years  of  constant  use  by  single 
168 


"ROUNDED    WITH    A    SLEEP" 

sleepers  weighing  two  hundred  and  fifty  pounds 
each,  will  easily  transform  itself  into  a  hammock 
that  will  hold  in  its  capacious  pouch  as  many  people 
as  can  crawl  into  that  bed.  As  fast  as  a  man  gets 
in,  he  rolls  down  to  the  bottom.  "The  Hammock" 
always  has  sponge  pillows,  knotted  like  gnarly  old 
live-oaks. 

Then,  there  is  "The  Reservation,"  preempted  by 
wandering  tribes  of  bloodthirsty  savages,  whom  no 
amount  of  patience  and  gentleness  and  kind  treat- 
ment has  ever  been  able  to  wean  from  their  sleepless 
cruelty.  But,  be  it  ever  so  lumpy,  there's  nothing 
like  bed  for  a  sleepy  man.  "The  bed  has  become  a 
place  of  luxury  to  me,"  said  the  great  Napoleon ; 
"1  would  not  exchange  it  for  all  the  thrones  in  the 
world." 

"In  bed  we  laugh,  in  bed  we  cry, 
And  born  in  bed,  in  bed  we  die ; 
This  near  approach  a  bed  may  show, 
Of  human  bliss  to  human  woe." 


A  DAY  IN  MOTLEY 

YOU  may  take  it  as  a  rule,  man's  a  fool ;  ne'er 
contented  with  his  lot,  always  wanting  what 
he's  not,  never  liking  what  he's  got;  when  it  rains, 
he  wants  it  dry,  when  it's  dry,  for  rain  he'll  cry; 
prays  for  money  when  he's  poor,  when  he's  rich  he 
prays  for  more ;  when  he's  got  all  he  can  find,  dies, 
and  leaves  it  all  behind;  if  he's  lame,  he  wants  to 
walk ;  if  he's  dumb;  he  tries  to  talk ;  by  and  large, 
and  up  and  down,  in  the  country  and  in  town,  you 
may  take  it  as  a  rule,  man's  a  fool. 

There  is  one  day  in  the  year  which  we  do  cele- 
brate. We  may  divide  on  Washington's  birthday, 
for  there  are  unto  this  day  people  who  maintain  that 
Washington  did  unjustly  and  tyrannously  when  he 
compelled  the  Tories  to  submit  to  a  government 
which  was  founded  without  their  consent  and 
against  their  will;  there  are  some  Orangemen,  so 
to  speak,  who  will  not  "walk"  on  St.  Patrick's  day, 
and  there  are  some  Irishmen  who  will  not  observe 
170 


A   DAY   IN   MOTLEY 

the  king's  birthday  to  keep  it  hilarious.  But  the 
glorious  first  of  April — everybody  observes  that 
day.  Oh,  yes;  you're  in;  you're  a  charter  member, 
you  are;  in  fact,  you're  It;  you're  the  Queen  of  the 
May,  that  morning;  that's  why  the  carrier  waked 
you  early,  Fooley  dear;  and  that's  why  you  are  so 
eagerly  scanning  these  lines  to  see  if  your  name  is 
spelled  right.  Oh,  the  day  wouldn't  be  perfect  if 
you  weren't  in  it!  In  fact,  in  a  way,  it  might  be 
considered  your  birthday. 

Now  that  we  pleasantly  understand  each"  other — 
what's  that?  Oh,  "You  thank  Heaven  that  while 
you  may  not  be  perfect,  you  are  not  a  fool."  Yes ; 
that's  what  we  thought  you  thought.  That's  why 
the  convention  elected  you  president,  on  the  first  bal- 
lot. There  wasn't  a  dissenting  vote.  There  was  no 
other  candidate.  The  convention  was  just  waiting 
for  that  kind  of  a  fool  to  nominate  himself  with  that 
kind  of  speech.  No,  don't  "thank  Heaven  that  you 
are  not  perfect."  Imperfection  isn't  the  gift  of 
Heaven.  God  created  man  perfect.  There  wasn't 
a  flaw  or  a  fault  about  him.  All  our  follies  and  all 
our  badnesses  are  human  acquisition.  We  hunted 
171 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

them  up,  and  put  them  on,  we  made  improvements 
on  them,  and  invented  new  ones,  ourselves.  That's 
why  the  first  of  April  is  set  apart  all  over  the  world, 
as  a  universal  holiday.  It  belongs  to  the  human  race. 
And  every  year,  you  know,  we  common  children  of 
folly,  look  around  for  a  Wise  Man,  who  knows  it  all 
and  has  forgotten  the  rest,  and  we  elect  him  Chief. 
He's  the  Biggest  One  of  Us.  The  Biggest  on  Earth. 
Is  that  you  ? 

Now  that  we  have  honored  you  by  putting  you  in 
the  chief  place  at  the  feast,  let  us  on  with  the  hilar- 
ity. This  is  our  day — "All  Fool's  day!"  Happy 
people!  Here,  once  a  year  we  can  meet  on  a  com- 
mon level,  without  regard  to  race,  age,  sex,  previous 
political  affiliations  and  present  religious  inclina- 
tions. True,  we  do  not  willingly  admit,  even  to 
one  another,  that  we  are  constituent  members  of  our 
glorious  order,  but  as  we  all  know  it,  each  about  the 
other,  let  us  not  mar  this  freedom  of  the  day  by  dis- 
sembling. 

On  this  day,  that  is  set  apart  for  those  of  earth's 
creatures  who  are  endowed  with  reason  and  the 
faculty  of  speech,  even  on  this  day  that  is  sacred 
172 


A   DAY   IN   MOTLEY 

to  fools,  when  we  plume  ourselves  upon  our  shrewd- 
ness, it  only  shows  what  manner  of  fools  we  be. 
We  carefully  avoid  the  alluring  and  corpulent 
pocketbook  that  is  ostentatiously  laid  upon  the  side- 
walk, a  powerful  temptation  to  the  mercenary  mind, 
as  we  are  hastening  to  insure  our  precious  lives  in 
a  Responsible  Company  that  guarantees  a  quarterly 
dividend  of  twenty-two  per  cent,  the  first  year.  If 
we  pick  up  the  pocketbook  we  shall  hear  some  in- 
visible body  laugh.  But  when  we  take  out  the  Get- 
rich-quick  policy,  there  is  also  invisible  laughter,  but, 
alas,  we  do  not  hear  it.  We  scorn  to  kick  the  hat 
that,  temptingly  poised  like  an  extinguisher  of  glee 
over  the  upright  brick,  invites  us  to  kick  it  half-way 
across  the  street.  But  we  rush  across  the  street  just 
as  an  automobile,  a  runaway  horse  and  a  trolley-car 
are  trying  to  settle  the  right  of  way,  and  if  we  kick 
anything  with  that  broken  leg  for  the  next  six  weeks 
it  is  ourself. 

Vainly  does  the  man  who  smuggled  it  without 

paying  any  duty,  attempt  to  sell  us  a  nice,  large, 

square,  gold  brick.     But  the  first  book  agent  who 

comes  along  catches  us  with  the  first  three  num- 

173 


OLD  TIME   AND   YOUNG  TOM 

bers  of  the  Mastodon  Encyclopedic  Universal  Dic- 
tionary of  Prehistoric  History,  to  be  issued  in  sev- 
enty-nine bimonthly  parts.  You  can't  fool  us  with 
a  note  inviting  us  to  dine  with  some  mysterious 
person  at  some  improbable  hour.  But  you  can  easily 
get  us  to  shriek  our  lungs  to  rags,  to  stay  up  and  out 
nights  for  six  weeks,  and  ruin  our  digestion  and 
clothes  electioneering  for  some  "farmer  candidate" 
who  thinks  a  yoke  of  steers  means  a  pair  of  bunco 
men,  or  a  candidate  on  the  "soldier's  ticket"  who 
thinks  a  gun  swab  is  something  you  load  a  musket 
with.  We  won't  touch  off  a  bear  trap  to  see  how 
the  thing  works,  but  a  little  trap  baited  with  an  ad- 
vertisement telling  how  you  can  make  ten  thousand 
dollars  in  ten  days  without  work,  catches  us  by  the 
neck — every  time?  Well,  not  oftener  than  every 
other  time. 

You  have  known  a  fool  who  knew  enough  to 
make  one  million  dollars,  spend  one  thousand  dol- 
lars of  it  for  stuff  that  is  warranted  to  make  long, 
curling,  dark-brown  hair  grow  on  a  billiard  ball, 
and  ten  thousand  dollars  to  get  back  a  stomach 
that  God  gave  him  for  nothing.  And  you  have 
174 


A   DAY   IN   MOTLEY 

known  another  fool  who  never  had  a  cent,  spend 
one  million  dollars'  worth  of  time,  which  he  did 
have,  wishing  that  he  had  one  million  dollars,  which 
he  couldn't  keep,  if  he  got.  I  have  known  the  fool 
who  thought  himself  to  be  wise  above  that  which  is 
written,  to  bend  his  strength  to  the  handle  of  the 
grindstone  and  circulate  it  with  the  power  of  his 
arms  and  the  ache  of  his  back,  until  the  ax  was 
sharpened  to  the  keenness  of  the  razor's  edge,  when 
straightway  he  that  held  the  ax  smote  off  the  head 
of  him  that  turned  the  grindstone.  I  have  known 
the  fool  to  pack  his  aching  head  in  ice,  and  bind 
the  same  hard  and  tight  with  a  towel  in  the  morn- 
ing, and  swear  by  all  his  gods  and  some  of  his 
goddesses  that  he  would  never  do  it  again,  and 
lo,  when  the  sun  went  down  once  more  he  did  the 
same  thing  with  intricate  and  fiery  variations. 

I  have  seen  the  fool  go  forth  and  look  for  a  snake 
to  bite  him,  and,  being  bitten,  to  bewail  his  fate  and 
cry  out  that  he  was  the  most  unfortunate  man  that 
ever  was  born.  I  have  seen  the  fool  drop  a  bag  of 
money — which  is  to  say,  a  wad — into  an  exceed- 
ingly deep  and  dark  hole,  the  bottom  whereof  no 
175 


OLD  TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

man  could  tell,  save  he  who  held  the  sack  at  the 
other  end,  and  then  go  away,  weeping,  and  earn  an- 
other wad,  which  he  came  back  and  dropped  into 
the  same  hole,  if  so  be  that  he  might  see  where  the 
first  one  went.  And  they  both  went  the  same  way, 
which  was  a  "no  thoroughfare,"  but  went  straight 
through  just  the  same. 

A  very  wise  fool  one  day  said  to  me,  with  a  fine 
curl  of  scorn  on  his  prehensile  lips,  "Five  years  after 
you  are  dead,  not  a  soul  in  all  this  world  will  laugh 
at  any  of  the  silliness  you  have  been  uttering  all 
these  years  of  your  foolish  life."  And  I  said  I 
could  tell  him  even  better  than  that:  ever  so  many 
people  don't  laugh  at  my  poor  jokes  now.  And 
they  would  not  be  remembered  while  I  lived.  And 
those  that  were  remembered  would  be  forgotten 
long  before  I  died.  Nobody  knows  that  so  well  as 
the  joker.  Ah,  my  boy,  people  will  not  laugh  at  our 
jokes  in  the  years  to  come.  Not  at  our  funny 
things.  They  will  laugh  at  our  wisdom.  That's 
what  our  children  will  laugh  at.  They  will  laugh 
at  our  profound  views  upon  theology,  and  astron- 
omy, and  medicine,  and  geology,  and  politics.  We 
176 


A   DAY   IN   MOTLEY 

do  not  laugh  at  the  funny  things  men  said  to  Chris- 
topher Columbus.  .We  laugh  to  read  how  their  best 
and  profoundest  scholarship  proved  that  the  world 
was  flat.  That's  what  we  laugh  at  We  laugh  at 
the  "wisdom"  of  our  fathers. 

There  was  a  wise  man  once  upon  a  time  who 
"knew"  that  no  locomotive  could  ever  run  faster 
than  fifteen  miles  an  hour  with  a  train  of  cars. 
Didn't  think  it ;  he  "knew"  it.  There  was  another 
wise  man  who  "knew"  that  the  best  light  that  could 
ever  be  discovered  was  lard  oil.  There  was  a  man 
who  "knew"  that  Colonel  Drake  was  insane  when 
he  said  he  could  pump  oil  out  of  the  ground,  as  you 
pump  water.  There  was  a  man  who  "knew"  that  Edi- 
son was  insane  when  he  was  experimenting  with  the 
electric  light.  There  was  a  man  who  "knew"  that 
the  telephone  was  a  newspaper  lie.  There  was  a 
man  who  "knew"  that  you  could  never  make  the  sun 
draw  your  portrait.  There  was  a  man  who  "knew" 
where  the  Great  American  Desert  was  when  it 
wasn't.  There  was  a  man  who  "knew"  he  was  going 
to  call  the  roll  of  his  slaves  under  the  shadow  of 
Bunker  Hill  monument.  There  was  a  man  who 
177 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

"knew"  that  the  horse  had  reached  his  limit  of  speed 
when  he  trotted  a  mile  in  2 140. 

And  to-day  there  are  men  who  "know"  that  the 
gigantic  corporations  are  devouring  the  life  and 
substance  of  the  country;  who  "know"  that  the  peo- 
ple are  helplessly  and  hopelessly  enslaved,  and  wear 
galling  fetters  under  their  socks  and  clanking  man- 
acles under  their  cuffs.  You  can't  see  'em,  but  you 
can  hear  'em  when  you  shake  hands  with  the  other 
slave.  There  are  men  who  "know"  that  all  politics 
is  corrupt,  all  politicians  are  mercenary,  the  civil 
service  is  rotten  to  the  core,  and  all  our  social  life 
honeycombed  with  decay. 

Among  the  other  fools  who  inhabit  this  globe 
from  generation  to  generation,  there  will  be  always 
the  fool  in  opposition,  who  thinks  he  can  stay  the 
triumphant  progress  of  the  chariot  by  hanging  back 
in  the  breeching  and  braying,  "I  object!"  Every 
generation  has  him.  Every  team  has  a  mule  that 
puts  forth  all  its  intellect,  all  its  strength,  all  its  zeal 
and  enthusiasm  into  "the  holdbacks."  And  he  isn't 
of  any  earthly  account  except  when  the  wagon  is 
going  down-hill.  And  the  old  world  chariot  isn't 
178 


A   DAY   IN   MOTLEY 

going  that  way,  son.     Not  in  this  day  and  genera- 
tion, it  isn't. 

The  only  thing  you  can  do  with  that  fellow  in 
the  team — the  fellow  whose  only  characteristic  is 
whining,  obstinate,  pig-headed,  mulish  opposition  to 
everything — is  to  keep  moving  and  drag  him  along. 
For  he's  got  to  come  with  the  rest  of  the  team.  Keep 
ahead  of  him.  Rasp  his  hocks  with  the  doubletrees. 
The  chariot  never  stands  still,  not  a  minute.  To- 
morrow will  come  on  time  and  go  on  time,  for  all 
the  fools  and  all  the  wise  men  on  earth;  for  the 
fellow  who  runs  close  up  into  his  collar,  with  joy 
and  exultation  and  hope,  and  for  the  fellow  who, 
with  his  eyes  shut  tight,  his  ears  laid  down  along  his 
neck,  his  back  up  on  his  shoulders,  his  haunches 
sprawled  on  the  ground,  his  heels  digging  in  the 
road,  and  his  heart  in  the  mud  under  the  wheels, 
comes  rasping  and  scraping  and  heehawing  along, 
yelling  that  he's  going  to  stay  right  where  he  is,  and 
hold  everything  else  with  him,  and  that 

"  *     *     *     This  rock  shall  fly 
From  its  firm  base  as  soon  as  I." 

179 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

And  he  doesn't  know  that  the  rock  is  flying  along, 
too,  with  the  rest  of  the  outfit,  round  and  round  the 
sun,  over  a  thousand  miles  a  minute,  and  racing 
from  west  to  east  twenty-five  thousand  miles  a  day, 
and  only  one  actor  in  the  entire  aggregation  standing 
still,  and  that's  the  fool  who  only  thinks  he  is. 

Why,  my  boy,  every  time  you  make  a  jump,  you 
throw  dust  back  in  that  fellow's  eyes.  Don't  have 
any  "holdbacks"  on  your  harness,  boy.  You're 
going  to  run  up-hill  all  the  way ;  you  won't  need  'em. 
All  you  want  is  an  easy  collar  and  taut  traces ;  you'll 
run  light  and  feel  free.  Step  out  and  keep  pace 
with  the  time  and  its  spirit,  and  sing  as  you  run, 
and  keep  the  fellow  in  the  breeching  so  covered  with 
dust  that  the  world  will  only  know  he's  there  by 
the  dust  around  him  and  the  noise  he  makes.  Oh, 
maybe  you  will  strike  a  heart-straining,  breath- 
catching  gait  once  in  a  while,  when  the  grade  is 
easy  and  the  road  is  narrow;  where  the  cliff  is  a 
wall  of  granite  on  one  side  and  a  sheer  drop 
into  Avernus  on  the  other.  You  do  give  us  heart- 
failure  once  in  a  breezy  day,  son,  when  you  hit  a 
1 119  gait  on  a  3:20  road,  but  never  mind;  there's 
180 


A   DAY   IN   MOTLEY 

a  good  driver  on  the  seat,  and  a  firm  hand  on  the 
lines,  and  a  stinging,  cracking,  sure-reaching  whip  to 
keep  you  inside  the  traces,  and  a  steady  foot  on  the 
brake. 

You're  not  the  first  colt  that  ever  started  in  to 
stampede  the  team  and  run  away  with  the  chariot, 
and  she's  making  regular  trips  right  on  time,  up  to 
this  day.  And  I'd  rather  see  you  coming  along  the 
reaches,  my  boy,  with  the  bit  in  your  teeth,  your 
heels  in  the  air,  the  brake-rod  sprung  and  the  splin- 
ters flying  just  enough  to  rock  the  passengers  awake, 
than  have  you  come  into  the  relay  station  with  your 
legs  set  like  crowbars,  the  dust  of  the  whole  team 
flying  in  your  face,  and  you  only  keeping  up  with 
the  neck-yoke,  because  you  couldn't  help  it.  If  you 
must  be  a  fool,  son,  be  in  the  lead.  You  can  see 
farther,  when  you  are  at  the  head  of  the  procession, 
and  you  can  set  the  pace  to  suit  yourself. 

Oh,  when  you  hold  it  up  and  look  at  it  as  the  light 
shines  through,  there  are  some  threadbare  spots  in 
life,  sure  enough. 

Man  is  born  young,  with  many  ready-made 
troubles  waiting  for  him,  and  no  teeth.  And  some- 
181 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG  TOM 

times  it  would  be  money  in  his  pocket  if  he  had  less 
of  one  and  none  of  either.  For  the  troubles  he  could 
make  for  himself  as  he  grew  older.  And  as  for  his 
teeth,  when  he  has  none,  he  is  happy,  his  food  as- 
similates, and  his  digestion  is  perfect.  When  he 
cuts  the  first  one,  he  has  convulsions,  and  as  fast  as 
he  gets  them  they  begin  to  ache.  As  the  last  one  is 
coming  through  the  dentist  is  pulling  the  first  one 
out.  And  it  is  so  that  after  he  becomes  used  to  them 
and  they  have  grown  to  be  a  vital  necessity  to  him, 
he  loses  them  all.  And  his  mouth  is  fitted  up  with  a 
porcelain  grin  and  a  plate  built  to>  hold  raspberry 
seeds,  so  that  the  last  state  of  that  man's  mouth  is 
worse  than  the  first.  This  is  also  vanity. 

In  the  midst  of  life  he  is  in  debt,  and  the  assessor 
is  a  burden  to  him,  likewise  the  tax  collector  pur- 
sueth  him  whithersoever  he  goeth,  and  the  real  estate 
man  haunteth  him.  Wherefore,  between  undervalu- 
ing his  property  to  the  one  and  overvaluing  it  to  the 
other,  his  conscience  becometh  cross-eyed  and  he 
forgetteth  what  the  truth  tastes  like. 

He  walketh  forth  in  the  bright  glad  sunlight  to 
absorb  the  ozone  of  mountain  and  sea,  and  the  bank 
182 


A   DAY   IN   MOTLEY 

messenger  meeteth  him  in  the  way  with  a  sight 
draft  for  four  hundred  and  twenty-seven  dollars. 

The  baluster  of  life  is  full  of  slivers,  and  he 
slideth  down  it  with  considerable  rapidity. 

In  the  morning  he  goeth  forth  with  hope  in  his 
heart  and  confidence  in  his  trainer,  and  is  knocked 
out  in  two  short  rounds. 

He  cometh  home  late  in  the  eventide,  when  it  is 
dark  as  a  cave,  and  the  wheelbarrow  lieth  in  wait  for 
him  in  the  garden  path,  and  it  riseth  up  and  smiteth 
him,  and  falleth  to  the  earth  with  him,  and  runneth 
one  handle  into  his  ribs  and  the  other  into  his  ear. 

In  the  balmy  spring  he  taketh  a  journey  into  a  far 
country  east  of  the  mountain  to  see  the  old  folk,  and 
a  blizzard  striketh  him  in  his  summer  clothes,  a 
thousand  miles  from  home,  and  filleth  his  system 
with  woe  and  quinine. 

He  putteth  on  his  yachting  jacket  when  the  sum- 
mer is  come,  and  the  wasp,  who  hath  builded  a  nest 
for  her  young  between  the  armholes  thereof,  maketh 
it  tropical  for  him. 

He  getteth  into  his  red,  red  golf  jacket,  and  hieth 
him  forth  to  the  links,  and  a  gentleman  cow,  with  a 
183 


OLD   TIME   AND   .YOUNG  TOM 

deep  bass  voice,  a  curl  on  his  brow  and  horns  like 
a  buffalo,  showeth  him  the  shortest  way  across  the 
canon,  and  the  quickest  way  over  the  bunkers.  He 
carryeth  a  torch  in  the  procession,  and  spilleth  kero- 
sene oil  all  over  his  Sunday  coat,  and  yelleth  himself 
voiceless  for  the  grand  old  party,  and  neglecteth  his 
business  and  forsaketh  his  family  to  whoop  it  up  for 
the  man  of  the  people,  and  lo,  his  neighbor,  who 
marched  not,  |ind  who  would  not  shout  for  anybody, 
and  who  put  up  never  a  cent,  getteth  the  post-office. 

If  he  weareth  old  garments  that  are  comfortable 
to  his  frame  and  are  bent  to  fit  his  angles,  they  who 
behold  him  in  the  street  cry  after  him  and  say, 
"Behold  the  hobo !"  And  if  he  dress  himself  up  to 
date  and  wear  seemly  garments,  they  say,  "Shoot  the 
dude!" 

His  daughter,  who  is  the  child  of  the  morning, 
whose  beauty  is  the  smile  of  the  starlight,  makes  a 
quilt  for  the  Mission  Band,  containing  more  than 
not  quite  four  million  stitches,  each  one  crazier  than 
all  the  others,  and  her  old  father  groaneth  as  he 
fasteneth  his  suspenders  with  a  wire  nail,  a  piece  of 
twine,  a  safety-pin  and  one  regularly-ordained  but- 
184 


A   DAY   IN   MOTLEY 

ton  which  aforetime  of  a  truth  was  on  his  overcoat. 

He  strolleth  into  the  leafy  forest  and  wood-ticks 
swarm  upon  him,  and  chigors  fill  his  epidermis. 

He  climbeth  along  the  trail  up  into  the  breezy 
mountain  heights  and  straightway  biteth  himself 
with  a  rattlesnake. 

His  boots  are  tight,  his  hat  is  loose,  somebody 
daily  sticks  his  red-ink  pen  into  the  black  ink,  and 
his  fountain-pen  into  the  mucilage. 

There  Is  a  spring  gun  in  the  orchard,  a  ram  in  the 
meadow,  a  bull  in  the  pasture,  and  a  mad  dog  in  the 
lane,  so  that  he  getteth  whip-sawed  nearly  every 
deal. 

Small  wonder,  then,  that  sometimes  he  loseth 
heart,  buyeth  a  through  ticket  for  Adullam  station, 
and,  uniting  himself  to  the  Discontented,  joineth 
the  Mugwumps  and  standeth  upon  the  platform  of 
"Down  with  everybody  and  everything,  all  the  time." 

Oh,  well,  things  are  never  so  bad,  even  at  their 
worst,  that  they  couldn't  be  a  little  worse.  And,  if 
we  must  be  fools,  once  in  a  year,  let  us  be  nervy 
fools.  "It  is  to  laugh."  There  is  no  fool  so  op- 
pressive in  his  folly  as  the  solemn  fool.  The  owl 
185 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

that  always  looks  wise  and  never  frivols  is  poorer 
than  any  fool  among  birds.  Any  boy  knows  how  to 
catch  an  owl,  but  who  ever  caught  a  chattering  jay 
by  hand  after  the  sun  was  up?  What  animal  among 
beasts  hath  so  grave  a  countenance  as  the  ass  ?  Also, 
among  men?  Let  us  mingle  a  little  healthful  levity 
now  and  then  with  our  gravity,  and  temper  our  folly 
with  becoming  seriousness,  and  life  will  be  so  worth 
the  living  that  not  one  man  in  fifty  thousand  will 
want  to  quit  it  when  he  has  to. 

"Of  two  evils,  choose  neither."  God  never  yet 
compelled  a  man  to  make  a  choice  of  two  evils.  It 
isn't  that  there  are  two  kinds  of  wrong  in  the  world ; 
there  is  one  kind  of  wrong  and  one  kind  of  right. 
And  the  trouble  with  the  fool  is,  that  he  wants  sev- 
eral kinds  of  wrong,  one  of  which,  the  pleasantest 
kind,  shall  be  accounted  to  him  for  righteousness. 
But  that  can't  be  done,  son.  Keep  that  in  mind, 
for  a  year,  anyhow,  and  next  Lenten  season  you 
won't  know  where  to  look  for  your  old  hair  shirt, 
it  will  be  so  long  since  you  threw  it  away. 


TAKING  ACCOUNT  OF 
STOCK 

PACKING   UP   TO   TREK 

IT  was  the  Ancient  Resident, 
With  a  hammer  in  his  hand. 
He  said,  "Would  I  were  President 
O'er  all  this  goodly  land ; 

"I  would  slay  the  man  who  would  invent 

A  -box  for  packing  goods  ; 
And  the  man  who  made  it  should  be  sent 

To  live  in  the  trackless  woods." 

For,  oh,  he  stood  in  a  wild,  wild  waste, 

A  chaos  of  boxes  and  things ; 
And  barrels  met  him  wherever  he  faced, 

And  papers,  and  nails,  and  strings. 

Around  him  they  piled  the  bent-wood  chairs ; 

Rare  lamps,  and  the  sewing-machine ; 
And  the  loftiest  heap  of  things  on  the  stairs 

That  ever  the  man  had  seen. 

187 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

He  pounded  and  hammered  the  whole  day  through, 

And  he  wrought  with  a  rusty  saw; 
And  oft  as  they  asked,  "Was  he  nearly  through?" 

He  savagely  answered,  "Naw ! ! !" 

He  rose  up  to  work  at  the  break  of  day, 
And  he  wrought  till  the  burning  noon, 

While  the  evening  shadows,  cool  and  gray, 
Heard  him  sawing  the  same  old  tune. 

There  were  three  blood  blisters  on  one  of  his  paws ; 

He  had  pounded  the  end  of  his  thumb ; 
And  he  yelled  so  much  that  his  wearied  jaws 

Hung  paralyzed,  limp  and  dumb. 

Oh,  look,  and  oh,  look !  where  he  sawed  his  knee ; 

And  see !  where  his  trousers  are  tored ! 
And  look — where  he  sat,  unwittinglee 

On  the  side  of  a  painted  board. 

He  is  covered  with  grime,  and  lint,  and  dirt ; 

He  has  mashed  his  toes  with  the  ax ; 
All  over  his  system  he's  pounded  and  hurt, 

With  sundry  and  divers  whacks. 

The  things  he  should  pack  he  has  left  outside ; 

He's  nailed  up  the  things  he  should  leave  ; 
The  box  is  too  short,  and  the  things  are  too  wide, 

And  his  "golf  talk"  makes  every  one  grieve. 
188 


TAKING   ACCOUNT   OF   STOCK 

He  nailed  up  the  clocks  with  the  kitchen  stove ; 

The  books  with  the  crystal  he  packed ; 
His  desk  and  a  mirror  together  he  rove, 

And  he  wept  when  the  mirror  it  cracked. 

His  wife's  new  bonnet  he  jammed  in  a  churn ; 

His  mother's,  he  chucked  in  the  fire ; 
And  new  destruction  at  every  turn 

He  wreaks  in  the  height  of  his  ire ; 
They  can  hear  him  up-stairs  yelling,  "Burn,  burn, 
burn!" 

And  down-stairs  a-hollering,  "Fire !" 

And  when  at  night  he  seeks  him  his  bed, 

No  slumber  or  rest  he  takes ; 
From  his  tingling  feet  to  his  throbbing  head 

He  has  more  than  three  hundred  aches ; 
He  wishes  and  wishes  that  he  were  dead, 

And  the  night  with  his  groanings  he  breaks. 

And  this  thought  sobs  through  all  of  his  moans, 
And  makes  him  the  saddest  of  men — 

The  things  he  has  packed  with  such  bruises  and 

groans, 
Some  day  he'll  unpack  again. 

I  know  there  is  some  poverty  in  the  world;  a 
great  deal,  in  fact,  although  not  nearly  so  much  as 
189 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

is  generally  believed.  A  few  years  ago,  in  the  black 
night  of  the  real  hard  times  that  came  when  people 
were  trying  a  political  experiment  which  they  have 
never  cared  to  repeat,  and  which  it  is  not  necessary 
to  specify  more  particularly  here,  a  gentleman  in 
Portland  announced  in  the  daily  papers  that  he 
would  give  a  bag  of  flour,  a  bushel  of  meal,  and  a 
sack  of  potatoes,  or  something  equivalent  to  them,  if 
preferred  by  the  recipient,  to  any  family  who  were 
destitute,  and  who  did  not  use  tobacco,  or  drink 
whisky,  or  keep  a  dog.  He  offered  to  do  this  for 
one  hundred  families.  And  it  is  said  that  he  did 
not  receive  one  application  for  assistance. 

Things  like  this  convince  me  that  there  is  more 
wealth  in  the  country  than  people  think,  and  the  cry 
of  "hard  times"  is  kept  up  merely  because  some 
people  have  got  into  the  habit  of  it,  and  don't  know 
how  to  stop.  The  drink  habit  isn't  the  only  one  in 
the  world  that  fastens  its  clutches  upon  its  victims 
with  hooks  of  steel.  Men  are  like  the  little  girl  who 
stopped  crying  one  day,  got  interested  in  her  happy 
play,  then  suddenly  stopped  playing  and  said, 
sweetly,  "Mamma,  what  was  I  crying  about  a  little 
190 


TAKING   ACCOUNT   OF   STOCK 

while  ago  ?"  The  mother  told  her.  "Oh,  yes !"  ex- 
claimed the  little  cherub,  "boo-hoo!  boo-hoo!  boo- 
hoo-oo-oo !"  and  cried  for  another  quarter  of  an 
hour.  It  became  a  pleasure  to  the  child  to  weep 
and  wail. 

I  do  not  wonder  that  men  become  rich,  when  I 
observe  how  strong  is  the  inherent  faculty  of  acqui- 
sition. Man,  even  when  he  is  a  spendthrift,  is  a 
saving  animal.  When  there  weren't  enough  people 
in  all  the  world  to  secure  a  city  charter  of  the  first 
class,  Abraham  and  Lot  found  the  whole  world 
was  scarcely  big  enough  for  them  and  their  posses- 
sions, and  they  divided  it  by  turning  their  backs  upon 
each  other  and  going  in  opposite  directions.  And, 
as  it  has  been  ever  since,  the  man  who  had  the  first 
choice,  and  tried  to  get  all  of  the  best — "hog  every- 
thing," I  think  I  have  heard  the  boys  call  it — got  the 
hot  end  of  the  poker,  and  lost  all  that  he  grabbed. 
And  you  have  seen  a  farm  where  the  most,  and,  in- 
deed, the  only  valuable  thing  about  it  was  the  fence, 
which  expensively  enclosed  a  quarter-section  of 
worthlessness. 

But,  poor  as  the  farm  was,  it  was  the  man's  own, 
191 


OLD   TIME   AND    YOUNG   TOM 

and  though  it  was  ruining  him,  health  and  pocket- 
book,  to  keep  it,  he  would  not  give  it  away.  It 
wasn't  worth  anything,  but  you'd  have  to  buy  it  to 
get  it.  It  was  that  man's  share  of  the  earth ;  it  was 
his  interest  and  right  in  creation;  it  was  his  title  to 
a  little  part  of  the  great  universe.  If  it's  only  a 
lot  with  a  twenty-five- foot  front,  my  son,  you  ought 
to  own  a  portion  of  the  solar  system,  and  then 
you  could  walk  with  your  head  among  the  stars, 
when  you  realized  that  whenever  they  called  an 
annual  meeting  of  the  stockholders  in  the  constella- 
tion of  Hercules,  they'd  have  to  send  you  a  notice, 
or  the  meeting  wouldn't  be  legal,  and  they  couldn't 
change  the  orbit  of  a  star  or  put  on  a  new  comet, 
with  a  limited  schedule,  without  your  vote.  Nothing 
makes  a  man  feel  so  rich  as  to  own  some  of  the 
earth,  with  rights  that  reach  up  to  the  sky,  or  as 
high  as  the  telephone  wires,  anyhow,  and  growl  all 
through  every  campaign  about  the  taxes,  which 
amount  to  eight  cents  per  annum,  and  haven't  been 
paid  for  six  years.  Own  a  little  of  the  universe,  my 
son. 

But  the  wealth  of  the  poor  man  becomes  apparent 
192 


TAKING   ACCOUNT   OF   STOCK 

to  himself  when  he  takes  a  compulsory  inventory, 
because  he  is  compelled  to  move.  I  say  compelled, 
because  no  man  moves  voluntarily,  after  the  first 
time.  He  is  led  by  an  uncontrollable  desire  for  a 
change,  an  overmastering  confidence  that  he  will 
better  himself  by  it,  or  he  may  be  driven  by  stern 
necessity,  but  in  either,  or  any  case  it  is  compulsory. 
And  then  he  discovers  that  he  is  the  possessor  of 
treasures  that  money  can  not  buy,  and  that  most 
people's  money  isn't  going  to  set  a  price  on.  He  is 
going  to  go  over  some  of  the  "things"  which  the 
years  have  accumulated  for  him,  because,  he  says, 
with  a  severely-meaning  glance  at  his  wife,  "There 
is  no  sense  in  turning  the  whole  house  into  a  storage 
for  things  that  nobody  will  ever  look  at  again,  and 
which  there  was  no  earthly  sense  in  keeping  in  the 
first  place."  Poor  man!  He  doesn't  know  what  he 
is  going  into.  Even  if  it  be  the  fifth  or  seventh  time 
he  has  passed  through  the  experience,  it  is  always 
new  to  him. 

In  the  first  place,  he  is  willing  to  make  affidavit 
that  he  never  saw  the  first  trunk  that  he  opens.    He 
didn't  know  it  was  in  the  house.    Where  and  when, 
193 


OLD  TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

for  mercy's  sake,  did  his  wife  get  that  car  of  Jugger- 
naut? And  when  she  meekly  shows  him  his  own 
name  on  the  end,  painted  in  his  own  unmistakable 
characters,  he  merely  remarks  that  that  is  "too 
thin,"  and  proceeds  to  find  out  what  she  has  stowed 
away  in  it. 

As  he  dives  into  the  contents,  which  appear  to  be 
mostly  letters,  on  the  top  row,  a  strange-looking 
worm,  of  deadly  countenance  on  one  end  and  a  thing 
that  looks  like  a  harpoon  on  the  other,  runs  up  his 
sleeve  and  helps  him  to  have  a  fit,  which  lasts  until 
his  voice  is  gone  and  his  sleeve  torn  off,  and  the  sup- 
posed worm  turns  out  to  be  a  wad  of  fluff  carried 
by  the  wind. 

And  then  you  and  your  wife  sit  down  together 
by  that  one  old  trunk,  and  all  day  long  rake  things 
out  of  it.  Photographs  of  people  whom  neither  of 
you  can  remember,  and  which  he  finally  labels  with 
the  wrong  names  and  lays  aside  to  keep.  Old 
school-books,  with  fearful  and  wonderful  infor- 
mation in  them — everything  obsolete  except  the 
good  old  multiplication  table,  which  is  too  mean  to 
die  and  too  tough  to  decay.  And  that  long-aban- 
194 


TAKING   ACCOUNT   OF   STOCK 

doned  and  forgotten  text  book,  an  English  gram- 
mar. Takes  you  some  time  to  find  out  what  that 
is.  Letters  written  by  hands  that  are  dust  with 
the  flowers  they  clasped  when  last  you  saw  them. 
Somehow  the  hopes,  and  the  dreams,  the  plans  and 
the  ambitions  in  the  faded  old  letters  seem  to  be  as 
old  as  the  multiplication  table,  and  yet  as  new. 
There  is  something  else,  then,  that  doesn't  die  ?  And 
that  lives  forever,  because  love  and  faith  and  hope 
are  immortal.  These  you  will  keep.  And  trinkets. 
And  baby  things.  And  broken  things  you  laid  aside 
to  mend  five  or  ten  years  ago.  Old  packages  of  re- 
ceipts. The  tradesmen  who  made  them  out,  and 
who  awaited  with  varying  degrees  of  patience  or 
wrath  for  their  money,  are  dead  or  old,  and  the 
goods  are  gone  with  the  man  who  sold  them,  and  the 
boy  who  drove  the  wagon  is  the  head  of  the  present 
house,  and  patronizes  you  when  you  meet  in  society, 
and  speaks  of  you  as  "one  of  our  oldest  customers", 
when  you  wish  he  wouldn't.  Old  invitations  to  this 
and  that.  What  cards  they  used  then!  And  how 
stiltedly  formal  they  were  before  "rag-time"  ease 
came  in  with  the  high  hand-shake.  And  a  glove, 
195 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

with  a  faint  memory  of  perfume  still  about  it — yes, 
you  can  get  it  on  again;  maybe;  but  try  it  very  ten- 
derly; Yesterday  must  be  handled  lovingly  and 
gently  when  we  try  to  make  it  fit  To-day.  He  re- 
members when  he  would  have  given  his  right  hand 
to  have  laid  that  glove  against  his  cheek  in  such 
fashion  as  you  laughingly  pat  into  it  now.  And 
there  is  a  belt — a  girdle  of  ribbon  with  the  buckle 
they  wore  long  ago !  Now,  try  to  put  that  on,  and 
the  children  will  come  romping  in  to  see  what  you 
are  laughing  about.  And  lo,  it  nestles  about  the 
waist  of  your  oldest  girl  as  though  it  were  made  for 
her. 

Old-fashioned  trifles  and  obsolete  trinkets;  bits 
of  finery,  too  flimsy  now  even  for  lint ;  memoranda 
relating  to  plans  that  were  then  in  the  air,  and 
now  are  ancient  history;  things  that  take  up  room, 
harbor  moths,  create  dust,  stand  ever  in  the  way; 
are  looked  at,  perhaps,  so  often  in  a  lifetime ;  are  of 
no  earthly  or  unearthly  use;  things  that  will  never 
again  fit  anywhere;  books  and  toys,  and  tools,  and 
garments,  and  traps  that  should  have  been  given 
away  or  destroyed  the  day  when  they  went  out  of 
196 


TAKING   ACCOUNT   OF   STOCK 

active  commission,  long  years  ago.  Yet  here  they 
are.  And  here  they  will  probably  stay,  for  a  large 
proportion  of  this  uselessness  you  will  put  back 
again  in  new  places,  to  pull  over  and  dig  into  some 
other  day  when  you  can  least  afford  to  waste  your 
time  on  them.  Now,  why  do  you  keep  these  things  ? 

Why  do  you  put  away  broken  things  with  the  im- 
possible dream  of  getting  at  them  and  mending  them 
some  day?  You  never  will.  You  can  buy  new 
things  more  cheaply.  And  the  new  things  will  be  up- 
to-date;  they  will  be  better  than  the  old  ever  were. 
And  if  you  are  poor,  you  can  least  afford  to  tinker 
over  the  old  things.  Go  through  your  own  house, 
and  you  can  find  a  cart-load  of  useless  things  in  it 
that  will  never  again  be  used,  and  for  the  saving  of 
which  you  can  give  to  yourself  no  good  reason. 
Why,  you'd  dress  better  if  you  would  give  to  the 
mission  boxes  ninety-nine  per  cent,  of  the  things  you 
have  worn,  the  day  you  lay  them  aside. 

It  is  an  axiom  of  business  that  there  should  be  no 

dead  capital  about  the  house.    And  yet  every  home 

in  the  land  is  fairly  burdened  with  the  useless  and 

the  impossible.    "No  man  putteth  new  cloth  into  an 

197 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

old  garment."  What  a  wide,  deep  lesson  there  was. 
You  can't  patch  a  good  new  reputation  upon  an  old 
bad  character.  You  can't  sew  on  a  virtue  to  cover 
'the  hole  left  by  a  worn-out  vice.  So  much  better 
— in  fact,  it  is  absolutely  necessary  to  throw  away 
all  the  old  life,  and  begin  a  perfectly  new  one.  That 
is  the  weak  point  in  "swearing  off"  anything,  son, 
and  patching  a  "good  resolution"  over  the  old  stain. 
Put  off  all  the  life  that  went  with  the  old  fault. 
Don't  try  to  "mend  things",  when  it's  so  much  better 
and  so  much  cheaper  to  get  new  things. 

Now,  nobody  knows  how  much  of  useless  "truck" 
there  is  about  the  house  until  he  goes  through  all  his 
belongings.  You  know,  vaguely,  that  there  is  a  lot 
of  "stuff"  in  those  boxes  and  trunks  and  old  chests 
of  drawers  stowed  away  in  trunk-room  and  garret. 
But  it  isn't  until  you  take  an  actual  inventory  of 
them  that  you  know  what  a  mass  of  dead  capital  you 
are  carrying  in  the  plant.  How  many  years  you 
have  spent  amassing  all  this !  And  it  all  served  its 
purpose  in  its  day.  It  has  grown  obsolete.  It  is 
useless.  But  you  cart  it  around  with  you,  from  one 
house  to  another.  You  store  it  away  and  pay  insur- 
198 


TAKING   ACCOUNT   OF   STOCK 

ance  and  storage  on  it.  You  threaten  again  and 
again  to  burn  up  the  whole  outfit,  but  unless  you  are 
a  man  or  woman  of  marvelously  strong  character, 
you  don't  do  anything  of  the  sort.  You  keep  on 
lugging  it  around  with  you. 

I  wonder  how  much  of  useless  capital  we  carry  in 
our  lives?  How  much  of  worthless  accumulation 
we  have  stowed  away  in  heart  and  brain,  in  thought 
and  memory,  to  the  exclusion  of  better  things,  that 
we  still  keep  on  carrying  about  with  us?  Some 
things  that  were  never  worth  anything  when  they 
were  new.  Pleasures  that  were  absolutely  hurtful. 
Amusements  that  didn't  merely  kill  time,  but  mur- 
dered the  good  impulses  and  the  good  deeds  that 
heart  and  brain  and  hand  had  otherwise  found  time 
and  desire  to  do.  How  we  may  have  gorged  the 
mind  with  books  that  were  insipid,  or  vulgar,  or 
inane  or  vicious,  until  there  was  no  room  on  the 
shelf  now  for  a  good  book!  How  we  may  have 
stored  the  life  with  puerile  ambitions,  selfish  plans, 
narrow  ideas,  shallow  and  groveling  aspirations ! 

I  suppose  many  of  us  do  not  know  just  what  stock 
we  are  carrying.  We  live  such  hurrying,  rushing, 
199 


OLD   TIME   AND    YOUNG   TOM 

overcrowded,  high-pressure  lives  that  we  can't  sus- 
pend business  long  enough  to  take  an  account  of 
stock.  And  we  glance  at  the  dusty,  old,  shelf-worn 
goods  sometimes,  and  say,  "Oh,  well,  they're  no  ac- 
count, but  they're  not  much  in  the  way,  and  it's  too 
much  trouble  to  take  them  down  and  look  over 
them."  By  and  by  you  will  get  a  notice  to  evacuate 
the  premises.  There  is  no  new  tenant  coming  into  the 
old  tabernacle,  but  you've  got  to  get  out.  The  old 
shell  is  going  to  be  torn  down  to  make  room  for  an 
entirely  new  one,  for  the  Owner  is  one  who  doesn't 
believe  in  patching.  And  you've  got  to  make  the 
"grand  trek."  You've  got  to  get  clear  off  the  earth. 
And  the  angel  will  make  you  unpack  every  bale  in 
the  caravan  before  he  will  let  you  through  the  gate 
into  the  other  world. 

And  it's  a  question  which  gate  you'll  be  sent 
through,  then.  What  sort  of  picture  are  you  going 
to  present,  as  you  stand  at  the  gate  of  Heaven,  and 
unload  all  the  things  you've  piled  up,  and  stacked 
up,  and  gathered  into,  and  stored  away  in  your  life 
in  all  these  years  on  earth?  .What  a  heap  of  trash 
200 


TAKING   ACCOUNT.   OF   STOCK 

it  will  make !  What  you  have  read,  what  you  have 
thought,  what  you  have  said,  what  you  have  done. 
The  things  that  you  have  cherished.  The  baubles 
that  you  have  considered  precious.  The  tinsel  that 
you  have  adored.  All  the  things  of  which  you  have 
made  your  life.  I  don't  know  how  you  are  living, 
nor  what  you're  doing.  But  you  do.  What  are  you 
gathering  to  yourself  in  this  life,  that  you  are  going 
to  take  into  the  next  one?  That's  a  joyous  thing  for 
you  to  think  about.  And  if  the  contemplation 
doesn't  make  you  joyful,  why,  it's  a  good  thing  for 
you  to  think  about,  anyhow. 


THE  RELIEF  OF  THE 
SLAMRACK 

IK  there  is  one  thing  upon  which  I  pride  myself 
more  than  another,  it  is  something  else.  Not 
that  I  assume  any  credit  to  myself  for  this  superior- 
ity, because  it  is  a  faculty  which  is  inborn  with  me. 
Very  few  men  can  say  as  much,  and  the  man  who 
dares  say  more  is  none.  At  least,  none  that  I  know 
of.  With  these  remarks,  which  explain  themselves 
as  well  as  any  living  creature  can  explain  them,  per- 
mit me  to  pass  to  the  next  thing,  which  will  be  much 
the  same,  only  different. 

Visitors  who  have  been  permitted  to  an  interior 
view  of  the  "den"  wherein  I  store  the  intellectual 
apparatus  with  which  I  conduct  my  experiments 
upon  human  patience  and  credulity  have  often  re- 
marked upon  its  neatness  and  its  systematic  order. 
I  have  not  infrequently  made  the  assertion  that  I 
could  go  into  that  room  the  darkest  night  in  the  year, 
at  the  darkest  hour,  and  lay  my  hand  upon  the  book, 
202 


THE   RELIEF   OF   THE    SLAMRACK 

memorandum,  pencil  or  whatever  it  was  I  wanted. 
And  this  was  not  idle  boasting ;  it  is  true.  I  usually 
turn  on  the  light  before  going  in,  but  that  has  no 
effect  upon  the  darkness  of  the  night.  That  is  just 
as  dark  as  ever  it  was.  It  has  pleased  me  to  note 
that  the  visitors  believed  me.  At  any  rate,  they 
said  they  did.  And  I  believed  the  visitors.  If  they 
did  not  believe  me,  then  we  were  in  the  same  boat, 
anyhow,  and  I  had  the  proud  satisfaction  of  know- 
ing that  I  was  quite  as  truthful  as  my  friends. 

One  night,  not  so  long  ago  but  that  I  have  had 
time  to  forget  it,  were  it  not  for  my  interest  to 
remember  it,  I  was  aroused  from  a  beautiful  dream 
by  the  slamming  of  a  shutter.  I  can  go  to  sleep  in 
a  railway-station  hotel,  with  the  yard  engines  play- 
ing tag  up  and  down  the  tracks  all  night,  without  a 
struggle.  But  a  slamming  shutter  murders  sleep 
with  a  refinement  of  cruelty  that  would  give  Mac- 
beth points.  You  never  know  when  to  listen  for  the 
next  slam.  And  you  don't  know  whether  it  will  be 
a  single  or  a  double  slam.  The  next  time  it  flies 
open  you  can  distinctly  hear  the  catch  fall  into  place, 
and  you  say,  "Thank  Heaven,"  as  devoutly  and 
203 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

earnestly  as  though  you  really  believed  that  Heaven 
sends  angels  down  to  earth  to  fasten  shutters  for 
men  who  are  too  lazy  to  get  out  of  bed  and  walk 
across  a  room  only  eighteen  feet  wide. 

Heaven  is  good  to  us;  vastly  better  than  we  de- 
serve, the  majority  of  us — all  of  us,  in  fact,  except 
myself  and  a  few  personal  friends  whom  I  could 
name,  being  unprofitable  servants — but  I  do  not  be- 
lieve that  Providence  condescends  to  do  general 
housework  for  people  who  snore.  As  far  as  I  can 
remember  I  can  recall  but  one  instance  in  which  the 
Lord  ever  closed  a  shutter  for  anybody.  He  did 
close  a  window  for  Noah.  But  that  was  probably 
more  to  keep  the  other  sinners  from  getting  in,  than 
to  save  Noah  a  little  trouble.  But  just  after  you 
have  thanked  Heaven  for  the  catching  of  your  shut- 
ter it  comes  back  again  with  a  crash  that  makes  the 
glass  rattle  and  jingle,  and  sets  every  nerve  on  the 
quiver. 

Anybody  who  might  overhear  your  next  remarks 

would  conclude  that  if  ever  Heaven  shut  a  door  for 

you  you  would  be  on  the  outside.     Sometimes  the 

shutter  pats  softly  against  the  window  half  a  dozen 

204 


THE   RELIEF   OF  THE   SLAMRACK 

times,  just  stirring  you  up  lightly.  You  listen  and 
wonder  what  that  queer  sound  is;  it  sounds  like 
burglars ;  you  never  heard  a  burglar,  but  that  sounds 
just  like  one.  You  listen  with  your  hair  arranging 
itself  pompadour;  the  gentle  tapping  keeps  up.  You 
cry,  "Who's  there  ?"  Nobody  says  anything,  and  at 
last,  like  the  boy  hunting  the  cricket,  you  decide  that 
it  is  "nawthin'  but  a  noise,"  and  lie  down  again. 

Just  as  your  head  touches  the  pillow  the  shutter, 
which  has  only  been  going  through  these  prelim- 
inary tappings  to  get  on  a  good  ready,  hauls  back, 
makes  a  false  motion  or  two,  and  lets  go  against  the 
side  of  the  house  with  a  bang  that  turns  your  heart 
to  ice,  and  silences  the  meat-hound  howling  in  the 
next  yard.  To  save  your  life,  after  that,  when  you 
get  your  nerves  calmed  down  sufficiently  to  permit 
you  to  walk  across  the  room  without  waltzing  like  a 
teetotum,  you  get  up  to  fasten  the  shutter.  You 
then  discover  that  it  is  on  the  adjoining  house,  and 
go  back  to  your  bed  again. 

But  this  night,  after  going  through"  the  nervous 
agony  attendant  upon  a  shutter  seance,  I  became 
convinced  that  the  sleep  destroyer  was  loosely  ad- 
205 


OLD   TIME   AND   .YOUNG   TOM 

justed  to  my  own  property,  and  moreover  that  it 
•was  a  "den"  window.  I  remained  perfectly  quiet  for 
a  long  time,  hoping  that  some  other  wakeful  mem- 
ber of  the  household,  more  nervous  than  myself, 
would  weary  of  the  racket,  get  up  and  bind  the  slam- 
ming bedlam  to  silence.  But  nobody  else  appeared 
to  be  awake. 

Once  or  twice  I  sat  up  in  bed  and  shouted, 
"What's  that?"  not  for  information,  but  for  the  pur- 
pose of  reinforcing  the  shutter  and  arousing  some 
one  of  the  family.  Once  awake,  I  knew  the  sufferer 
could  not  get  to  sleep.  But  the  alarm  failed.  I 
could  hear  deep  breathings  from  the  other  rooms; 
I  could  hear  the  shutter  softly  creaking  as  it  lined 
up  to  buck  the  center  once  more ;  I  could  hear  a  dis- 
tant cat  bewailing  the  mocking  fate  that  shut  up  the 
barn  and  locked  the  kitchen  while  it  was  foraging 
at  a  neighboring  manse ;  I  could  hear  all  the  noises, 
loud  and  soft,  near  and  far,  it  seemed  to  me,  that 
were  making  themselves  heard  anywhere  in  the 
world  at  that  time.  But  not  another  soul  in  the 
house  could  hear  anything. 

I  am  a  patient  man,  but  patience  has  limits,  even 
206 


THE   RELIEF    OF   THE    SLAMRACK 

in  the  constitution  of  the  patientest  man  living.  I 
exhaled  a  hollow  groan  for  the  callous  indifference 
of  my  family,  sleeping  while  I  was  distracted  and 
maddened  by  the  furious  bombardment  against  the 
side  of  the  house.  Then  I  arose,  and  in  my  bare 
feet — the  night  was  darker  than  the  Cave  of  Adul- 
lam,  which  has  the  reputation  of  being  a  rather 
shady  place — or  I  would  not  have  done  such  a  thing 
for  the  world. 

Feeling  my  way  cautiously  in  the  rayless  gloom, 
I  struck  the  edge  of  the  door  only  once,  backed  off, 
got  past  it  next  time  successfully,  and,  uttering 
audibly  a  statement  that  would  have  saddened  the 
hearts  of  my  family  had  any  of  them  been  awake, 
I  went  down-stairs,  doing,  I  fancy,  a  somewhat 
creditable  ballet,  as  I  felt  my  way  through  the  dark- 
ness with  poised  and  flourishing  feet.  However, 
it  was  wasted  grace;  thrown  away  on  the  Cim- 
merian darkness — a  friend  of  mine,  Ben  Evra- 
whair,  says  he  once  traveled  across  the  Cimmerian 
Desert,  and  it  was  so  dark  at  noon  that  he  trod  on 
his  own  heels — but  I  kept  on  dancing  just  the  same. 
I  reached  the  "den";  I  opened  the  door  after  feeling 
207 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

all  over  it  five  times  before  lighting  upon  the  k'nob, 
and  stepped  cautiously  into  the  room. 

The  old  room ;  the  room  that  I  know  so  well ;  the 
room  into  which  I  am  wont  to  go — according  to 
tradition — in  the  inky  blackness  of  the  darkest 
night,  and  pick  things  up  by  the  right  end.  I  thought 
of  these  traditions  as  I  started  on  my  voyage  of  re- 
lief, and  wished  that  I  had  drawn  some  of  the 
shadiest  of  them  less  darkly.  I  put  out  my  hand 
and  felt  something  that  was  a  stranger  to  me.  It  felt 
like  a  globe,  but  I  knew  the  globe  was  never  placed 
on  top  of  the  bookshelves.  I  felt  carefully  all  over 
this  new  object.  Just  as  I  pushed  it  off  and  it  went 
crashing  to  the  floor  I  recognized  it.  It  was  a  lamp 
which  belonged  in  the  sitting-room,  but  I  had  carried 
it  up  to  the  "den"  because  my  study  lamp  was  not 
filled. 

A  man  making  a  voyage  of  relief  in  his  bare 
feet  across  a  carpeted  plain,  newly  strewn  with  a 
broken  lamp-chimney,  is  about  as  pleasantly  situated 
as  a  mettlesome  horse  charging  across  a  battle-field 
planted  with  spike-blooming  caltrops.  By  much  tip- 
toeing, however,  with  very  slow  solemn  movements, 
208 


THE   RELIEF   OF   THE   SLAMRACK 

as  though  I  were  performing  a  religious  dance,  I 
avoided  the  crystal  fragments.  I  made  one  high 
long  stride  to  get  out  of  the  haunted  ground,  and 
stepped  into  a  large  waste-basket,  a  sort  of  a  Pom- 
peian  vase-looking  thing  with  a  narrow  top.  My 
foot  forced  its  way  into  the  top,  but  it  was  like  pull- 
ing off  a  porous  plaster  to  get  it  out  again.  I  got  rid 
of  the  basket,  but  upset  a  rocking-chair  in  the  strug- 
gle, and  went  into  camp  to  think  about  it. 

I  made  a  cautious  detour  to  avoid  the  fallen  chair, 
and  when  my  calculations  told  me  I  was  past  it  I 
knew  where  I  was,  stepped  out  boldly  and  fell  over 
it.  I  didn't  so  much  mind  running  my  arm  through 
the  bottom  of  it,  because  it  was  an  old  chair,  any- 
how, and  needed  recaning.  But  as  I  realized  that  I 
had  impaled  myself  in  the  short  ribs  on  one  of  the 
Heaven-pointing  rockers,  a  tired  feeling  crept  over 
me  that  I  would  have  traded  for  a  match  in  a  minute. 
I  groaned  heavily,  hoping  that  some  one  hearing  the 
fall  and  the  groan  would  think  I  had  been  murdered 
and  come  in  with  a  light.  But  if  any  one  heard  the 
groan  he  made  an  incorrect  diagnosis.  I  picked  my- 
self up  with  some  difficulty.  Twice  I  was  nearly  on 
209 


OLD   TIME   AND    YOUNG   TOM 

my  feet  when  the  chair  tilted,  got  an  underhold  on 
me  and  threw  me  heavily.  By  most  desperate  efforts 
I  kept  it  from  getting  on  top  of  me,  to  which  I  owe 
the  fact  that  I'm  alive  now. 

Once  more  on  my  feet,  I  sidled  over  until  I  could 
touch  the  bookshelves.  Thus  guided,  I  moved  for- 
ward cautiously  until  I  stepped  on  something  which 
felt  like  a  tack,  but  which  I  discovered  afterward 
was  only  a  piece  of  glass.  I  was  nearing  the  bang- 
ing shutter  now;  I  could  feel  the  cold  air  blowing 
upon  me.  I  reached  out  one  foot  and  felt  that  it 
rested  on  nothing.  I  felt  down  farther  with  it,  but 
could  not  touch  bottom. 

I  stooped  down  and  investigated.  Somehow  or 
other  I  had  got  turned  around  in  my  struggle  with 
the  rocking-chair,  groped  out  of  the  "den",  walked 
down  the  hall  and  was  on  my  way  down-stairs.  A 
new  danger  threatened  the  expedition.  If  I  were 
heard  prowling  around  down-stairs  I  stood  a  good 
chance  of  getting  myself  shot  at.  Moreover,  as  I 
was  an  honest  man,  the  master  of  the  house,  and  not 
a  burglar,  I  would  be  shot  dead  the  first  time  any- 
body snapped  at  me.  A  real  burglar,  of  course, 
210 


THE   RELIEF   OF   THE    SLAMRACK 

would  be  missed  forty  feet  in  a  room  sixteen  feet 
square.  I  got  down  on  my  hands  and  knees  and 
crawled  back  into  the  "den",  ramming  into  a  pile  of 
unbound  magazines  and  strewing  the  floor  with 
them. 

After  crawling  into  the  "den"  a  sufficient  distance 
to  guarantee  myself  against  another  escape  out  of 
the  door,  I  rose  to  my  feet.  As  I  began  this 
maneuver  my  head  came  in  violent  contact  with 
some  hard  substance,  with  a  crash  that  made  a  thou- 
sand lights  dance  fearfully  before  my  eyes,  and  I 
sank  back  to  my  former  recumbent  posture  and 
wept.  I  had  crawled  under  the  desk.  But  in  the 
awful  darkness  how  was  I  to  know  that?  I  retro- 
graded from  the  desk,  backing  into  a  revolving- 
chair.  I  felt  my  way  into  this,  sat  down,  went  into 
camp  and  rubbed  my  head  while  I  planned  another 
forward  movement. 

I  bethought  me  that  sometimes  there  was  a  box 
of  matches  on  my  desk,  and  reached  out  and  felt  for 
it.  I  put  my  finger  into  the  ink-well.  I  did  not  dare 
go  crawling  and  feeling  around  among  my  papers 
with  a  finger  dripping  with  ink;  I  could  not  safely 

211 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG  TOM 

wipe  it  on  anything  on  the  desk,  so  I  did  the  best 
thing  I  could :  I  wiped  it  thoroughly  and  carefully 
on  my  hair.  "Thank  Heaven,"  I  said,  "I  am  not 
bald." 

Next  morning,  when  I  learned  upon  further  in- 
vestigation that  I  had  dipped  my  finger  not  into  the 
ink-well  but  into  the  mucilage-pot,  I  wasn't  so  sure 
that  a  head  of  hair  was  always  an  advantage  over  a 
bald  and  glistening  skull. 

The  shutter,  which  had  been  silent  for  some  time, 
now  fired  a  solitary  shot.  This  guided  me  in 
the  right  direction.  I  moved  forward  with  great 
caution,  holding  my  arms  outspread,  and  step- 
ping high.  With  a  shriek  that  might  have  curdled 
the  blood  in  a  turnip  I  put  my  foot  into  something 
cold  and  wet  and  slimy,  and  something  scaly  and 
horrible  wriggled  away  from  beneath  it.  I  jerked 
my  foot  into  the  air,  and,  trembling  from  head  to 
foot,  weak,  limp  and  terrified,  sank  to  my  knees, 
rasping  my  shins  as  I  did  so  on  the  sides  of  a  com- 
mon wash-tub. 

I  then  remembered  that  my  son  was  keeping  a 
212 


THE   RELIEF   OF   THE    SLAMRACK 

young  alligator,  about  ten  or  twelve  inches  long,  for 
a  friend  who  had  recently  brought  it  from  Florida. 
I  now  resolved  that  it  should  go  into  the  ice-house 
the  next  day  if  another  morning  should  dawn  in  this 
world  upon  the  wretched  being  sitting  in  the  cold 
and  dark,  shivering  and  sobbing. 

How  long  I  remained  there  I  do  not  know.  It 
was  an  oblivion  of  horror.  I  remembered  all  my 
sins — that  is,  some  of  them.  I  am  not  omniscient, 
of  course.  I  remembered  especially  one  crime  I  had 
committed  inadvertently,  for  which,  I  had  no  doubt, 
I  was  now  being  punished.  One  time,  in  the  far- 
away years  when  I  went  a-lecturing,  I  was  enter- 
tained at  the  home  of  a  friend  of  mine,  in  a  town  in 
Pennsylvania.  He  was  a  minister  of  the  gospel. 
.When  I  went  to  my  room  that  night  I  noticed  that 
his  daughters  had  decorated  the  prophet's  chamber 
with  an  endless  array  of  Christmas  cards  and  adver- 
tising chromos — a  very  rainbow  of  color  and  a 
kaleidoscope  of  design  all  over  the  walls.  The  cards 
were  stuck  up  with  pins.  Every  inch  of  space  was 
covered  with  them.  I  walked  around  the  room  as 
213 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

one  would  walk  about  a  picture  gallery.  Then  I 
went  to  bed  and  had  the  nightmare. 

I  had  to  take  a  train  at  five  o'clock  the  next  morn- 
ing. I  refused  to  permit  the  family  to  get  up  at  the 
unearthly  hour  at  which  I  would  have  to  arise.  I 
said  good-by  the  night  before,  and  carried  the  alarm 
clock  to  my  room.  At  four-fifteen  A.  M.  I  arose.  It 
was  dark  as  Erebus,  this  county,  and  I  couldn't  find 
the  matches.  I  had  a  dim  recollection  of  seeing  a 
match-safe  on  the  wall  the  night  before,  and  went 
around  the  room  feeling  for  it.  I  scraped  off  a 
gorgeous  snow-storm  of  picture  cards.  Round  and 
round  that  room  I  went,  mowing  these  resplendent 
walls  with  my  clawing  hands,  feeling  and  hearing 
the  pins  and  cards  rain  down  about  my  feet. 

Once  or  twice  I  made  my  way  to  the  bureau  and 
picked  up  a  box  of  hairpins,  and  inwardly  reviled  the 
foolish  girls  who  would  put  a  box  of  hairpins  on  a 
man's  dressing  table  and  forget  the  matches.  At  last 
it  occurred  to  me  to  investigate  the  box  more  closely. 
I  opened  it.  It  contained  matches.  I  lighted  the 
lamp  and  shuddered  as  I  gazed  upon  those  denuded 
walls.  High  as  my  iconoclastic  hands  could  reach 
214 


THE   RELIEF   OF   THE    SLAMRACK 

there  wasn't  a  pin  or  a  card  in  sight.    And  the  floor ! 
Strewn   with   the   wreck  of   the   chromatic   press 

"Thick  as  autumnal  leaves  that  strew  the  brooks 
In  Vallambrosa." 

With  wild  and  guilty  haste  I  thrust  myself  into 
my  clothes  and  fled,  locking  the  front  door  on  the 
outside,  lest  the  family,  awaking,  should  discover 
what  I  had  done  and  pursue  me. 

Once  more  now  the  shutter  banged  with  a  defiant 
challenging  slam,  and  by  one  mighty  effort  I  got 
to  my  feet  and  made  my  way  to  the  window.  With 
that  last  crash  the  shutter  had  accomplished  its  mis- 
sion of  distraction.  It  had  fastened  itself  back  so 
tightly  that  when  I  tried  to  close  it  next  day  it  came 
off  the  hinges. 

It  was  cold  in  the  "den" — oh,  very  cold.  But  I 
could  stand  the  cold.  A  faint  light  was  kindling  the 
east,  and  arrowy  streaks  of  gray  were  shooting 
across  the  inky  skies.  I  waited,  playing  castanet 
solos  with  my  chattering  teeth  until  the  early  gleam 
of  a  winter  morning  crept  into  the  room  like  a  ghost 
of  light,  and  faintly  outlined  my  way  to  the  door. 
215 


OLD   TIME   AND   .YOUNG   TOM 

Then  I  hopped  lightly  but  stiffly  out  of  the  "den"  and 
up  to  my  room,  lest  my  guilty  track  should  betray 
me,  washed  the  alligator  mud  off  my  frozen  foot, 
and  crawled  into  bed  to  wait  for  the  grippe  or  pneu- 
monia to  come  along  and  finish  the  expedition  for 
the  relief  of  the  Slamrack. 


JUST  FOR  LUCK 

DO  I  believe  in  luck?  Well,  if  ever  a  man  be- 
lieved in  anything,  I  believe  in  luck.  That's 
one  thing  I'm  superstitious  about — good  luck.  The 
other  thing  is  bad  luck.  Some  men  are  lucky — I 
have  known  them  and  you  have.  And  we  have 
known  other  men  who  were  unlucky  all  their  lives. 
Regular  Jonahs,  men  call  them.  Lucky  and  un- 
lucky men.  Every  trade  and  profession  and  calling 
has  them.  They  begin  their  career  of  good  or  bad 
luck  at  school.  In  the  old  days  when  football  was 
so  called  because  it  was  played  with  the  feet — that 
is,  we  kicked  the  ball  instead  of  one  another — I  knew 
a  boy  who  always  kicked  the  ball  with  his  ankle, 
and  so  sent  it  -back  over  his  head,  against  his  own 
side. 

Therefore,  whenever  he  got  the  ball,  his  friends 

would   shriek   frantically,   "Turn  around.     Andy! 

Turn  around!"     And  Andy,  blind  to  the  evil  fact 

that  he  was  born  under  a  malignant  star — a  whole 

217 


OLD  TIME   AND   YOUNG  TOM 

nebula  of  adverse  fates,  in  fact — would  glare  in- 
dignantly at  us,  bid  us,  in  schoolboy  vernacular, 
to  "shut  up !"  face  the  foe  with  grim  determination 
on  his  face,  and  with  one  mighty  kick  make  a  goal 
for  the  enemy.  He  couldn't  help  it,  his  friends 
said.  "Andy's  luck,"  we  called  it.  He  did  every- 
thing backward.  It  would  have  done  your  brain 
good,  that  is,  it  would  have  done  it  thoroughly,  so 
to  speak,  to  see  him  go  to  the  board  and  prove,  with 
many  intersecting  chalk  lines,  that  things  equal  to 
the  same  thing  were  greater  than  one  another. 

When  he  left  school  he  was  apprenticed  to  a  car- 
penter, and  always  clinched  his  nails  on  top.  He  had 
a  passion  for  retroactive  mechanics,  and  when,  in  the 
first  year  of  the  Civil  War,  he  invented  a  breech- 
loading  cannon,  we  all  said,  "That's  what  we  ex- 
pected Andy  would  make."  And  the  first  time  they 
fired  it  the  charge  blew  the  whole  breech-block  clean 
out  into  unsearchable  space,  and  never  spoiled  the 
barrel  of  the  gun.  And  we  all  said,  in  chorus,  "Just 
what  we  expected!"  He  went  into  the  army,  and 
one  dark  night,  on  a  Mississippi  transport,  he  heard 
a  man  fall  overboard,  and  instantly  leaped  in  to  res- 
218 


JUST   FOR   LUCK 

cue  him.  He  found  him  and  caught  him  by  the  hair. 
The  ungrateful  man  had  jumped  overboard  to  de- 
sert. He  didn't  want  to  be  rescued  any  more  than 
Emin  Pasha,  and  he  caught  his  preserver  by  the 
throat,  beat  his  face  into  a  pulp,  nearly  drowned 
him,  and  got  away.  "Andy's  luck." 

And  there  was  another  boy,  Bud  Wright,  you  re- 
member. When  he  went  a-fishing,  Saturdays,  he 
wore  the  oldest  clothes  in  the  crowd,  and  somehow 
or  other  always  looked  better  dressed  than  the  rest 
of  us  did  when  we  went  to  school.  If  he  fell  into 
the  creek  he  always  came  out  looking  so  much  better 
than  before  that  we  had  an  impression  that  he  did 
it  "a-purpose".  If  he  knew  only  one  paragraph  in 
the  lesson,  somehow  or  other  that  was  the  one  he 
was  questioned  on.  If  there  were  twenty  of  us 
caught  out  in  the  rain,  with  only  one  umbrella,  Bud 
had  the  umbrella.  When  we  dug  out  a  bumblebee's 
nest,  the  rest  of  us  got  stung,  and  Bud  got  the  honey. 

When  we  broke  the  court-house  window,  while 

throwing  stones  at  a  toy  balloon  that  had  got  away 

from  a  weeping  "kid",  Bud  was  observed  to  be 

standing  with  his  hands  in  his  pockets,  while  the  rest 

219 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG  TOM 

of  us  held  pebbles  in  our  guilty  fingers.  We  were 
assessed  to  pay  for  that  window,  while  Bud,  the 
Lucky,  was  held  up  to  us  as  a  model  of  good  con- 
duct, and  we  all  liked  him  so  well  that  even  that 
couldn't  make  us  hate  him.  He  was  just  "lucky", 
and  no  right-hearted  boy  could  blame  him  or  dislike 
him  for  that. 

If  anybody  whistled  in  school,  Bud  either  looked 
surprised,  or  was  so  absorbed  in  his  books  that  he 
never  looked  at  all.  It  was  the  boy  sitting  near 
him  who  looked  frightened  and  blushed  guiltily 
when  he  caught  the  teacher's  eye  fixed  on  him 
like  a  gimlet.  It  wasn't  that  Bud  was  any  better 
or  any  worse  than  the  rest  of  us.  He  was  just 
"lucky",  that  was  all.  And  observing  Bud  and 
Andy  with  a  boy's  eyes,  I  early  acquired  an  un- 
questioning belief  in  luck.  The  first  "sheepshead" 
I  caught  in  Peoria  Lake,  I  carefully  cut  the  "lucky- 
stone"  out  of  his  head  and  carried  it  in  my  pocket  as 
long  as  a  boy  carries  anything.  To  the  possession  of 
that  talisman  I  attributed  the  fact  that  I  was  not  lost 
on  board  the  Ocean  Spray  when  that  beautiful  and 
popular  steamboat  burned  to  the  water's  edge  down 
220 


JUST   FOR   LUCK 

at  St.  Louis,  while  I  was  at  school,  only  two  hundred 
miles  away.  More  than  once  it  saved  me  from  death 
by  lightning,  because  I  could  put  my  hand  in  my 
pocket  and  feel  it,  while  the  storm  was  at  its  height. 
Once  I  tumbled  headlong  and  in  arms-and-legs 
confusion  to  the  ground  while  climbing  a  rail  fence 
with  a  shotgun  in  my  hands,  and  would  undoubtedly 
have  blown  the  whole  top  of  my  head  off,  but  for  the 
fact  that  my  "lucky  stone"  was  in  my  pocket,  and  the 
gun  wasn't  loaded,  I  having  fired  my  last  charge  of 
powder-and-shot  at  a  wild  goose  flying  beyond  the 
range  of  a  telescope.  If  there  is  anything  in  space 
that  a  boy  won't  shoot  at  when  he  is  out  with  a  gun, 
it  must  be  feeding  somewhere  behind  the  moon.  I 
lost  the  "lucky  stone"  early  in  1861.  Shortly 
afterward  came  the  disaster  to  the  Federal  arms  at 
Bull  Run,  and  soon  after  the  war  I  began  to  write 
poetry,  and  then  started  a  daily  paper  to  fill  a  long- 
felt  want.  Small  wonder,  then,  that  I  have  always 
believed,  and  do  believe,  in  luck. 

As  I  grew  older,  I  don't  think  my  belief  in  luck 
became  weaker,  but  it  became  established  on  a  more 
221 


OLD   TIME   AND    YOUNG   TOM 

systematic  basis.  Really,  as  I  studied  the  examples  of 
lucky  and  unlucky  people,  and  the  instances  of  good 
and  bad  luck  that  came  under  my  observation,  I  be- 
came more  and  more  confirmed  in  my  belief,  or  su- 
perstition, if  your  superior  wisdom  prefer. 

I  remember  that  Andy,  the  Luckless,  never  thought 
of  anything  until  after  the  thing  had  become  an  ac- 
complished fact.  That  he  never  thought  of  planning 
how  to  do  anything,  until  the  emergency  and  the 
sudden  necessity  of  doing  the  thing  slammed  into 
his  face  like  a  barn  door  in  a  gust  of  wind  in  the 
dark.  That  he  did  things  as  a  dog  jumps  over  a 
board  fence,  with  never  a  thought  of  the  mink  trap, 
muddy  ditch,  or  forty-foot  gravel  pit  on  the  other 
side.  That  he  answered  every  question  put  to  him, 
quick  as  a  flash,  without  wondering  or  guessing 
what  the  next  question  might  be.  That  he  some- 
times made  haste  to  give  what  he  called  his  "rea- 
sons" when  "Yes"  or  "No"  would  have  been  abso- 
lutely safe  and  all  sufficient.  That  he  inopportunely 
proffered  his  unsolicited  services  as  mediator,  in  the 
presence  of  both  combatants,  when  the  fight  was  hot, 
with  the  inevitable  result  in  both.  That  he  habitu- 
222 


JUST   FOR   LUCK 

ally  bit  off  more  than  he  could  chew.  That,  like 
some  other  distinguished  men  of  a  later  day,  he 
sometimes  went  out  to  fight  Dutch  Boers  with  an 
Indian  reputation,  and  paid  a  high  premium  for 
learning  what  anybody  might  have  known  for  noth- 
ing— the  vast  difference  between  a  heathen  who 
dresses  in  a  cotton  sheet  and  pecks  rice,  like  a  hen, 
and  a  citizen  soldier,  who  wears  clothes,  says  his 
prayers,  and  eats  beef  like  a  man.  That  was  "Andy's 
luck." 

And  this  also  I  began  to  remember :  that  Bud,  the 
Lucky,  had  more  plans  in  his  head  than  a  strategy 
board  in  time  of  peace.  That  it  was  next  to  impos- 
sible to  surprise  him,  because  he  had  adjustable  com- 
binations ready  for  everything.  That  in  the  class, 
on  the  days  when  his  firing-line  was  dangerously 
thin,  he  had  a  way  of  asking  questions  that  drew 
attention  to  himself  and  his  strongest  position.  That 
even  the  teacher  should  have  known  that  the  only 
boy  in  school  who  knew  when  and  whence  the 
whistle  was  coming  would  be  most  innocently  pre- 
pared for  it.  That  even  the  lawyers  at  the  court- 
house might  have  known  that  the  boy  with  his 
223 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

hands  full  of  stones  was  just  going  to  throw,  and 
the  boy  with  his  hands  in  his  pockets  had  just  fired 
the  fatal  shot  and  wasn't  going  to  shoot  any  more. 
That  when  it  looked  a  little  bit  like  rain,  Bud  car- 
ried an  umbrella.  That  when  untoward  "happen- 
stances"  came  his  way,  as  they  will  sometimes  come, 
even  to  the  luckiest  boys  and  men  and  mice,  he  made 
the  jolly  best  of  them,  until  in  our  eyes  they  ap- 
peared to  be  actually  desirable.  That  when  he  wore 
old  clothes,  he  wore  as  few  of  them  as  possible,  and 
so  did  not  multiply  rags  by  putting  a  patched  jacket 
on  top  of  a  faded  shirt,  neither  did  he  degenerate 
apparel  by  wearing  a  new  smart  necktie  with  it. 

He  studied  the  harmony  and  good  taste  of  the 
"had  been,"  and  he  did  not  commit  the  crime  of  put- 
ting new  cloth  on  an  old  garment.  He  invented  and 
made  things  for  the  people  who  needed  them,  wanted 
them,  bought  and  paid  for  them — not  for  the  gov- 
ernment that  would  make  him  pay  the  price  of  his 
contract  to  lobbyists  and  Congressmen  for  pushing 
through  a  bill  to  pay  him  what  the  government  owed 
him.  That  was  "Bud's  luck". 

Now,  my  son,  when  I  see  a  man  who  spends  all 
224 


JUST   FOR   LUCK 

the  morning  waiting  for  good  "chances"  to  come 
along,  and  all  the  afternoon  wondering  why  they 
didn't  come  to  him,  instead  of  stopping  with  the 
man  who  walked  three  miles  to  meet  them,  I  say, 
'There  is  an  unlucky  man."  And  I  never  miss  it. 

When  a  man  seven  months  behind  with  his  rent 
on  a  twenty  dollar  house  takes  half  an  hour  to  tell 
me  that  when  he  came  to  Los  Angeles  he  could  have 
bought  the  ground  on  which  the  court-house  now 
stands  for  fifteen  dollars,  he  has  no  need  to  add  that 
he  is  an  unlucky  man.  I  know  it.  Bad  luck  is  his 
by  hereditary  right.  I  knew  his  father  very  well. 
When  he  went  to  Denver  he  could  have  bought 
eighty  acres  right  in  the  heart  of  the  present  city 
for  forty  dollars.  Instead  of  buying  it,  he  went  to 
another  location,  ninety  miles  from  water  and  one 
hundred  and  fifty  miles  from  anything,  and  paid 
four  hundred  dollars  for  a  ranch  because  it  reminded 
him  of  a  farm  in  Pennsylvania  that  was  believed  to 
have  oil  on  it.  And  I  knew  his  grandfather.  He 
was  the  man  who  could  have  bought  the  land  in 
Chicago,  now  occupied  by  the  Palmer  House,  for 
seven  dollars.  But  he  preferred  to  invest  his  entire 
225 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

capital,  eighty-two  dollars,  in  buying  the  county 
right  for  a  patent  machine  a  "feller"  had,  which 
would  tell  you  where  to  find  water,  so'st  you  could 
locate  a  well  on  any  farm.  The  State  of  Illinois  lay 
over  a  subterranean  lake ;  if  a  man  pulled  up  a  beet 
he  opened  an  artesian  well,  and  the  machine  didn't 
pay.  That  man's  whole  family  was  unlucky.  You 
can't  blame  a  man  for  his  inheritance. 

When  a  young  man  lies  in  bed  till  nine  o'clock, 
thinking  what  he  will  do  when  he  gets  up,  I  know 
what  he  will  do  the  first  thing.  He  will  shake  hands 
with  the  Bad  Luck  that  is  waiting  for  him  at  the 
door. 

When  he  is  strong  enough  to  sit  on  a  store  box  for 
two  hours  at  a  time  and  never  take  his  hands  out  of 
his  pockets  save  to  scratch  his  head,  a  man  is  un- 
lucky on  the  face  of  his  paper.  When  he  has  been 
out  of  work  for  six  weeks,  and  won't  take  the  job 
that  is  offered  him  because  it  is  too  hard,  that  man  is 
born  to  adversity,  and  you  can't  help  it — or  him. 
The  man  who  tells  you  every  time  he  meets  you — 
and  always  has  leisure  to  tell  it — that  all  the  rest  of 
the  men  in  the  shop,  instigated  by  the  foreman,  are 
226 


JUST   FOR   LUCK 

down  on  him,  and  are  working  against  him,  is  an 
unlucky  man,  and  is  going  to  lose  every  job  he  gets. 
Men  usually  do  combine  against  an  "unlucky  man." 
When  a  man  has  a  salary  of  sixty  dollars  a  month 
and  his  clothes  cost  him  thirty  dollars,  his  board 
thirty-eight  dollars,  and  he  has  to  go  to  the  theater 
with  what  he  can  save  out  of  that,  he  is  handcuffed 
to  bad  luck.  When  he  tries  to  make  a  living  by 
"wishing",  his  plans  are  fated  to  go  wrong.  If  he 
ships  a  cargo  of  ice  to  the  Klondike  and  a  train- 
load  of  oranges  to  California,  he  is  commercially 
certain  to  lose  money  on  both  speculations.  The 
signs  of  bad  luck,  my  son,  are  as  plain  as  the  de- 
terminations of  palmistry,  which  are  infallible,  if 
you  have  known  the  man  forty- five  or  fifty  years. 

The  unlucky  man  starts  at  two  thirty  to  catch  the 
two  twenty-five  train,  misses  it,  and  says  it  is  "just 
his  luck".  So  it  is.  He  believes  in  all  signs  except 
the  one  which  says  "Keep  off  the  grass ;"  gets  fined 
five  dollars  for  not  observing  that  one,  and  says  he 
knew  something  would  happen  because  a  rabbit  ran 
across  his  path  that  morning.  He  forgets  to  put  a 
stamp  on  his  letter;  it  goes  to  the  dead  letter  office, 
227 


OLD  TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

and  he  loses  a  deal  that  would  have  made  him  one 
thousand  dollars.  Nothing  in  the  world  but  bad 
itick.  He  carries  a  rabbit  foot,  instead  of  a  memo- 
randum book,  and  misses  an  appointment  with  the 
senator  which  would  have  got  him  the  post-office; 
then  he  tells  you  he  is  "the  unluckiest  beggar  on 
earth".  So  he  is. 

He  flips  a  quarter,  "head  or  tail",  to  decide  which 
one  of  two  ways  he  shall  go,  or  things  he  shall  do, 
and  sometimes  the  quarter  isn't  omniscient,  and  he 
goes  the  wrong  way  and  gets  lost,  or  does  the  wrong 
thing,  and  gets  beaten  by  seven  hundred  and  fifteen 
majority  in  a  county  which  gave  nine  hundred  and 
fifty  for  all  the  rest  of  his  ticket.  He  sees  the  new 
moon  over  the  right  shoulder,  and  straightway  holds 
on  to  the  stock  he  was  on  his  way  to  sell,  and  there- 
after uses  the  certificates  thereof  for  a  scratch-block. 
He  looks  into  a  building  where  the  sign  says  "Keep 
out",  to  see  what  the  danger  is,  and  a  hodful  of  mor- 
tar falls  on  him.  He  stands  on  the  wrong  side  of  the 
street  to  stop  a  trolley-car,  and  it  shrieks  past  him. 
He  talks  "autobiographically"  to  a  stranger  on  the 
train,  and  the  stranger  is  a  reporter  who  makes  a 
228 


JUST   FOR   LUCK 

mighty  good  story  of  the  unlucky  man's  family 
troubles.  Oh,  my  boy,  there  is  no  mystery  about 
bad  luck.  I  believe  in  it ;  indeed,  I  do.  An  unlucky 
man  is  a  man  who  does  unlucky  things. 

When  a  man  gets  up  in  the  morning,  goes  out  and 
"shakes  himself",  Samson-like,  looks  out  upon  the 
world  with  bright  eyes  and  a  clear  brain,  puts  on  a 
working  jacket,  and  says,  "I  will  collar  the  first 
thing  that  comes  in  sight,"  that  man  puts  the  "come- 
along"  on  good  luck.  When  an  admiral  says,  "I 
will  write  to  the  Strategy  Board  and  learn  what  they 
think  I  had  better  do,"  his  name  may  be  almost 
anything.  But  when  he  doesn't  say  anything,  and 
steams  into  a  strange  harbor,  lined  with  hostile  bat- 
teries, filled  with  battleships,  mined  with  torpedoes, 
and  shrouded  in  night,  his  name  is  Dewey.  When 
for  every  dollar  that  he  puts  on  his  back  and  into  his 
stomach  he  puts  two  into  his  head,  a  young  man  is 
born  to  good  luck,  as  the  sparks  fly  upward.  When 
the  only  sign  he  believes  in  is  the  one  that  reads 
"Keep  to  the  right,"  he  is  superior  to  cats,  unstable 
salt-cellars  and  graveyard  rabbits. 

When  he  goes  to  bed  to  sleep,  rises  up  to  hustle, 
229 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

Fortune  just  loves  to  be  seen  on  the  street  with  him. 
When  he  sets  himself  to  find  what  he  can  best  do, 
and  then  resolutely  sets  himself  to  do  it  the  best  he 
can,  he  is  found  to  be  as  lucky  as  Andrew  Carnegie. 
When,  seeing  that  he  can  buy  the  ground  on  which 
the  court-house  is  going  to  stand,  he  doesn't  wait  to 
see  the  court-house  built,  but  jumps  on  to  the  deal 
with  both  feet  at  once,  the  ground  is  his  when  the 
county  commissioners  want  it,  and  it  will  be  theirs 
when  he  makes  them  a  deed.  That's  his  luck.  You 
don't  have  to  build  up  a  city  of  two  million  inhabit- 
ants before  he  can  tell  where  the  head  of  Lake 
Michigan  is — he's  "lucky",  that's  what. 

When  the  boy  who  sweeps  out  the  office  and  folds 
circulars  begins  to  call  the  entire  plant  "we",  he 
has  found  his  "lucky  stone".  And  when  he  refers  to 
the  junior  partner  as  "our  Mr.  Denims",  he  is  on  the 
straight  road  to  become  one  of  "us".  He's  as  lucky 
as  Edison.  When  he  resolves — and  sticks  to  his 
resolution — that  he  will  save  something  and  give 
away  something  every  week,  he's  going  to  be  as 
lucky  as  Rockefeller.  When  a  man  studies  and 
plans  and  works  with  brain  and  hand  and  heart  for 
230 


JUST   FOR   LUCK 

thirty  years,  and  then  suddenly  "stumbles"  upon  the 
secret  of  an  invention  that  has  been  his  life  dream, 
and  which  brings  him  fame  and  fortune,  he's  a 
"lucky"  man.  Not  because  he  "stumbled"  upon 
the  secret  in  ten  seconds  by  a  "lucky  accident",  but 
because  for  thirty  years  he  plodded  right  straight 
along  toward  the  only  place  on  earth  where  that  ac- 
cident could  have  happened.  That's  what  makes 
men  "lucky" ;  "lucky"  as  the  man  who  invented  the 
telescope;  the  sewing-machine;  the  steam  engine; 
the  telegraph  and  the  telephone. 

You  will  observe,  my  boy,  if  you  closely  and 
accurately  take  note  of  human  affairs,  that  there 
are  two  classes  of  fishermen — the  lucky  and  the  un- 
lucky. And  always  the  lucky  ones  are  the  ones  who 
know  how  and  where  to  fish.  That's  what  makes 
them  lucky. 

And  that's  why  I  believe  in  luck,  my  boy.  When 
a  man  gets  the  reputation  of  being  an  "unlucky 
man",  in  business,  in  war,  or  in  politics,  men  shun 
him.  Not  because  these  level-headed,  clear-thinking 
business  men,  or  these  straightforward,  hard-hitting 
soldiers,  or  these  shrewd,  worldly-wise,  crafty  poli- 
231 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG  TOM 

ticians  are  at  all  superstitious.  But  because  they 
know  that  "an  unlucky  man"  is  simply  a  man  who 
can't  -be  trusted.  That  he  is  either  lazy,  or  stupid,  or 
light-headed,  or  irresponsible.  They  know  that  he 
isn't  well-balanced.  That's  all  there  is  to  an  "un- 
lucky" reputation,  my  son.  It  isn't  that  he  is  a 
Jonah,  but  that  he  isn't.  Jonah  was  all  right.  True, 
when  he  did  exactly  what  he  knew  very  well  he  had 
no  business  to  do,  when  he  ran  away  from  his  duty 
and  made  himself  "unlucky",  he  endangered  the 
safety  of  a  ship  and  a  score  of  sailors. 

But  he  had  the  good  sense  and  good  conscience — 
which  make  any  man  "lucky" — to  ask  the  sailors  to 
toss  him  overboard,  which  is  always  the  best  thing  to 
do  with  an  "unlucky  man",  and  then  he  went  ashore 
and  saved  the  great  city  of  Nineveh  with  its  hun- 
dreds of  thousands  of  people  from  destruction.  Jo- 
nah may  have  been  an  unpleasant  man  to  have  on 
board  a  little  ship — some  very  good  people  are — but 
he  was  a  mighty  good  man  to  have  in  town.  Don't 
let  me  hear  you  say  that  you  are  "a  Jonah",  my  boy, 
bringing  bad  luck  to  everything  you  touch,  until  I 
have  heard  you  preach  once  or  twice.  If  I  can  just 
232 


JUST   FOR   LUCK 

see  you  bring  all  the  sinners  in  your  town  to  their 
knees,  I  shall  be  willing  to  admit  that  you  are  enti- 
tled to  be  called  a  Jonah. 

A  great  many  people,  my  boy,  know  nothing 
whatever  concerning  Jonah,  save  his  maritime  ex- 
periences and  his  encounter  with  the  whale.  They 
are  "unlucky"  in  their  reading,  that's  all. 

Is  isn't  "unlucky"  to  lose  your  way,  my  boy.  It's 
unlucky  to  keep  right  on  in  that  road  after  you've 
found  out  it's  the  wrong  one.  It  isn't  "unlucky"  to 
make  mistakes.  It's  "unlucky"  to  keep  on  making 
the  same  mistakes  over  and  over,  when  all  the  time 
you  know  it's  a  mistake.  It  isn't  so  unlucky  to  be 
bitten  by  a  dog.  But,  my  dear  boy,  it's  deadly  bad 
luck  to  buy  a  dog  and  keep  him — to  bite  you.  My 
son,  you're  one  of  the  luckiest  fellows  on  this  planet, 
if  you'll  only  work  for  good  luclc. 


IN  THE  SLAVE  MARKET 

THE  prophet  Amos,  with  whose  writings,  I 
take  it,  all  my  readers  are  slightly,  very 
slightly  indeed,  acquainted,  speaks  of  a  time,  some 
two  thousand  and  six  hundred  years  ago,  when  cer- 
tain dealers  in  human  chattels  said — impatiently 
waiting  for  the  close  of  divine  service  and  the  open- 
ing of  the  market — "When  will  the  new  moon  be 
gone,  that  we  may  buy  the  poor  for  silver,  and  the 
needy  for  a  pair  of  shoes  ?"  There  were  hard  times 
for  the  needy  when  they  were  going  as  cheaply  as 
that,  and  the  poor  must  have  been,  even  in  those  an- 
cient days,  a  drug  in  the  market.  This  traffic  in  liv- 
ing human  beings,  what  the  terminology  of  the  mar- 
ket would  probably  call  "Man  on  the  hoof",  is  a  very 
ancient  trade,  one  of  the  oldest  gilds  in  the  world, 
probably.  And  it  is  far  more  universal  than  the 
chattels  like  to  believe. 

I  have  been  sold — sometimes  very  cheaply,  al- 
though, I  suppose,  it  was  all  I  was  worth ;  at  least,  I 
234 


IN   THE    SLAVE   MARKET 

am  certain  that  I  brought  all  I  would  fetch,  I  have 
gone  into  the  market,  a  buyer  sometimes,  going 
forth  in  the  morning  to  buy  what  the  dictionary  calls 
a  horse,  but  which  the  dealer  invariably  terms  a 
"hoss";  and  I  have  returned  at  the  going  down  of 
the  sun  the  worst-sold  man  that  ever  fell  into  the 
hands  of  an  honest  "hoss-trader".  True,  at  the 
same  time,  I  had  bought  a  "hoss" — but  we  will  not 
speak  of  that  now;  "there  are  chords  in  the  human 
heart—" 

One  day,  after  I  Had  been  most  cruelly  sold  by  a 
very  funny  man  who  carried  about  on  his  person 
more  cells  than  there  are  also  in  the  honey  and  the 
honeycomb,  and  not  one  of  them  filled  with  sweet- 
ness, pondering  upon  this  brutal  traffic  in  the  deli- 
cate sensibilities  and  organic  life  of  man,  it  occurred 
to  me,  as  it  had  occurred  to  everybody  else  long,  long 
before  it  occurred  to  me  to  think  of  it,  that  this 
traffic  in  humanity  was  merely  an  evolution  of  trade ; 
that  we  had  bought  and  sold  everything  else  in  the 
world  for  so  many  generations  that  at  last  we  fell 
into  the  way  of  buying  and  selling  one  another 
merely  to  keep  our  hands  in — in  and  out,  that  is,  of 
235 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG  TOM 

one  another's  pockets.  But  when  I  came  to  look  the 
matter  up  I  began  to  think  that  I  was  far,  far  away 
from  the  safe  environment  of  my  base,  with  the  ball 
in  the  hostile  hands  of  an  agile  infielder  which,  as  a 
rule,  is  my  habitual  position  long  before  the  game 
begins  to  grow  interesting. 

I  suppose  that  men  did  buy  and  sell  other  things 
long  ago ;  I  can  not  see  how  Cain  builded  the  city  of 
Enoch  without  at  least  two  eligible  corners — one  for 
the  grocery  and  post-office,  and  the  other  for  the 
drug  store.  Tubal  Cain  must  have  had  a  market  for 
his  justly-celebrated  iron  and  brass  foundry. 
"Abraham  was  very  rich  in  cattle,  in  silver  and 
gold,"  and  all  the  farmers  tell  us  that  a  man  will 
starve  to  death  in  a  very  few  years  on  a  farm, 
and  the  stockmen  assure  us  that  the  cattle  busi- 
ness is  nothing  but  a  respectable  annex  to  the 
almshouse.  Therefore,  Abraham  must  have  made 
his  wealth  in  some  other  way.  Moreover,  his  herds- 
men and  Lot's  herdsmen  quarreled,  and  money  has 
been  at  the  root  of  all  the  quarrels  between  property 
owners  since  the  world  began,  somewhere  and  some 
way.  All  the  land  Abraham  had  in  the  world  was 
236 


IN   THE   SLAVE   MARKET 

given  to  him,  until  he  bought  the  field  of  Machpelah, 
and  long  before  that  we  read  that  he  had  members 
of  his  household  not  born  in  his  house,  but  "bought 
with  money,  of  the  stranger." 

Verily,  men  and  sisters,  we  are  marketable  chat- 
tels unto  this  day,  measurable  by  the  sheckels  of  the 
merchant,  even  as  were  our  fathers  before  us.  Small 
wonder  that  the  late  lamented  Boss  Tweed  asked 
concerning  every  man:  "What  is  his  price?"  It's 
in  the  blood  of  the  race. 

One  thing  about  the  men  or  women  who  are  pur- 
chasable: they  are  such  merchandise  as  was  real 
estate  in  old  Judea,  which  could  not  be  sold  forever. 
Not  that  there  is  any  year  of  redemption  for  the 
fellow  you  buy ;  oh,  no,  but  you  have  to  keep  on  buy- 
ing him !  It's  like  cornering  oats :  you  have  to  keep 
on  buying  all  of  him  that  offers  all  the  time,  to 
corner  the  market  of  him.  A  mercenary  he ;  not  a 
free-born  citizen,  nor  even  a  naturalized  one  in  our 
little  world  enterprise. 

You  hire  him  as  you  do  the  band  to  play  in  the 
Republican  procession  to-day,  the  Democratic  to- 
morrow, the  Populist  rally  the  next  day,  the  Pro- 
237 


OLD  TIME   AND   YOUNG  TOM 

hibition  convention  the  day  after  that.  And  he 
blows  his  horn  for  you — you  providing  the  horn 
— just  as  cheerfully,  and  pounds  the  resounding 
echoes  out  of  the  big  bass  drum  just  as  lustily  for 
your  cause,  so  long  as  you  pay  him,  as  he  will  for  the 
enemy  to-morrow.  Does  not  make  any  difference  to 
the  trumpeter ;  that's  what  the  band  is  organized  for. 
"I  care  not  who  make  the  laws  of  the  country,"  re- 
marks the  drum-major,  "if  only  I  may  play  for  the 
processions."  And  the  more  brass  there  is  in  the 
man,  the  more  noise  he  can  make,  the  more  surely 
is  he  in  the  market — empty  as  the  drum,  to  be  sure, 
but  quite  as  useful  in  the  procession. 

Sometimes  you  buy  the  man  to  make  a  noise  about 
some  things,  and  keep  silent  about  others.  That  is 
done  every  year.  "The  needy  man?"  Oh,  by  no 
means,  no !  Not  so  very  needy.  You  can't  buy  him 
for  a  pair  of  shoes.  Not  new  shoes,  anyhow.  Some- 
times if  you  will  let  him  stand  in  another  man's 
shoes,  that  will  do.  Very  often  that  is  the  price  he 
sets  upon  himself.  So,  after  all,  men  have  not  ap- 
preciated in  market  value  very  much  since  the  days 
of  Amos.  And,  singular  as  it  may  seem  to  you,  the 
238 


IN    THE    SLAVE   MARKET 

man  who  sells  himself  for  a  pair  of  shoes — old 
second-hand  shoes  at  that — is  not  very  particular  as 
to  the  fit.  No  indeed.  In  fact,  he  is  apt  to  bargain 
for  a  pair  much  too  large  for  him. 

When  you  go  into  the  market  and  buy  a  pigmy 
for  a  pair  of  shoes  you  take  notice  next  time  and  see 
if  he  does  not  specify  the  shoes  of  a  giant.  The  big- 
ger they  are  the  better  he  likes  them.  The  small  pol- 
itician always  asks  for  the  shoes  of  a  statesman;  the 
ward  heeler  must  have  the  place  of  some  good,  hon- 
est, respectable,  clear-headed  citizen  in  the  City 
Council;  the  woman  who  can't  manage  her  own 
children  wants  to  "run"  the  convention;  the  man 
whose  farm  was  sold  under  two  mortgages  wants  to 
be  land  commissioner;  the  man  who  failed  in  busi- 
ness for  eighteen  cents  on  the  dollar  wants  you  to 
indorse  his  application  for  a  position  in  the  Treasury 
Department.  After  Cromwell,  Charles  II.;  after 
Napoleon,  Louis  Philippe ;  after  the  thunder-storm, 
the  drizzle ;  after  the  flood,  the  mud. 

Nevertheless,  although  the  man  who  sells  himself 
always  wants  more  for  himself  than  he  is  worth — i 
and  always  gets  it — it  remains  an  indisputable  fact 
239 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

that  he  is  perishable  merchandise.  He  deteriorates 
rapidly.  Nothing  in  the  market  gets  so  quickly 
shelf-worn;  nothing  so  quickly  shows  the  dust  and 
finger-marks  and  grime  of  handling.  As  soon  as  it 
becomes  known  that  he  can  be  bought  he  becomes 
cheaper.  He  is  like  furniture — the  slightest  scratch 
or  stain  marks  him  down  "second-hand".  Cheaper 
and  cheaper  he  becomes  until,  at  last,  he  stands  in 
the  market-place  with  his  price,  "plainly  printed  on  a 
tag",  pinned  to  the  lapel  of  his  coat.  And  men  who 
are  buyers  in  the  market  laugh  as  they  pass  him  by, 
looking  for  a  higher-priced  article  that  will  last  a 
campaign  or  two  longer.  It  is  an  old  curse,  this  of 
deterioration,  upon  the  marketable  people.  Moses 
spake  it  in  the  law :  "Ye  shall  be  sold  for  bondmen 
and  bondwomen,  and  no  man  shall  buy  you." 

Somehow  or  other,  too,  disguise  it  as  they  will, 
buyer  and  seller  alike  being  anxious  to  keep  it  secret, 
everybody  comes  to  know  the  chattel.  There  used 
to  be,  a  few  years  ago — is  now,  for  that  matter — a 
class  of  bright  clever  entertainers  who  have  such  a 
gift  of  natural  happiness  and  gaiety  that  they  are 
frequently  hired — that  is,  employed — I  mean,  they 
240 


IN   THE   SLAVE   MARKET. 

are  invited,  under  the  persuasive  flattery  of  a  "com- 
plimentary stipend" — to  attend  dinner-parties  and 
other  social  functions,  there  to  make  merry  for  the 
host  and  his  friends  at  so  much  per  function.  Mr. 
Merryman  attends  in  his  court  dress — the  solemn 
livery  of  the  gentleman  and  the  head  waiter — fills 
all  the  dull  and  narcotic  pauses  with  the  spirit  of 
mirthfulness,  shortens  the  hours  and  promotes  di- 
gestion. He  bids  his  host  good  night,  and  under  the 
friendly  hand-shake  the  grateful  check  is  pressed 
into  his  well-deserving  palm,  and  the  guests,  glow- 
ing into  good  feeling  under  the  influence  of  his 
sunny  words  and  manner,  say  as  they  roll  home- 
ward :  "What  a  pleasant  home  to  visit !" 

But  before  long  so  many  people  got  to  maintain- 
ing court  jesters  by  the  night  that  the  illusion  of 
the  guest  habit  was  dispelled.  So  that  many  times 
an  innocent  guest  who  happens  to  be  endowed  by 
nature  with  a  mirthful  spirit,  and  "keeps  things  go- 
ing" merrily,  is  looked  upon  with  dark  suspicion, 
and  is  secretly  believed  to  be  in  the  pay  of  the  com- 
mon enemy,  the  host. 

In  politics,  in  religion,  in  parties  and  organizations 
241 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG  TOM 

of  any  character,  the  purchased  man  is  often  recog- 
nized by  the  fact  that  while  he  makes  a  little  more 
noise  than  do  the  retainers  "to  the  manner  born,"  he 
always  waits  for  a  signal.  He  never  erupts  natur- 
ally, like  a  volcano  bursting  out  upon  the  world, 
fed  by  its  own  soul-hidden  fires;  not  burning  out, 
but  blazing  away  now  and  again,  always  keeping  you 
in  lively  anticipation  of  another  eruption,  scattering 
lava  on  this  side,  cinders  to  the  other,  flames  to  the 
skies,  and  ashes  everywhere.  No,  the  boughten 
man  goes  off  at  the  proper  time,  like  a  carefully- 
tamped  charge  in  a  stone  quarry,  or  a  load  in  a 
cannon,  fired  with  friction  primer,  electric  wire,  or 
time  fuse — Boom!  Then  you  must  load  him  up 
again. 

So  many  people  you  see  as  you  pass  along  the 
way,  with  their  price-tags  on.  It  is  said,  so  quietly 
that  perhaps  you  have  never  heard  the  gossipy 
whisper,  that  some  of  them  are  office-holders — poli- 
ticians or  statesmen,  as  you  choose.  At  any  rate, 
for  some  reason  or  other,  men  have  got  into  the 
habit  of  treating  the  phrase,  "honest  election",  as  a 
jest.  Orators  on  the  rostrum,  like  the  augurs  in  the 
242 


IN   THE    SLAVE   MARKET 

Roman  temples,  pay  homage  to  honesty,  and  honor, 
and  patriotism,  and  integrity,  and  truth,  with 
averted  faces,  stifling  the  lurking  laughter,  and  the 
tongue  in  the  cheek. 

Masculine  horror  and  disgust  at  the  shameless 
sale  of  women  for  establishment  and  title,  for 
wealth  and  position,  have  been  on  tap  for,  lo,  these 
many  years,  until  it  began  to  be  believed  in  some 
circles  that  only  women  could  be  had  in  the  world's 
market.  It  is  now,  however,  suspected  by  several 
thoughtful  observers  that  a  buyer  with  plenty  of 
ready  money  or  good  appointments  might  pick  up  a 
man  or  two  for  spot  cash,  if  he  got  up  right  early 
and  went  out  shaking  the  trees  before  anybody  else 
had  been  there.  It  is  thought  by  some  that  when 
women  take  a  hand  in  practical  politics  this  sort  of 
traffic  will  be  reformed,  if  not  entirely  stopped. 
Well,  maybe!  Maybe!  Sometimes  it  does  work 
that  way.  Sometimes  it  doesn't. 

During  the  Seven  Years'  .War,  the  great  Silesian 

wars  of  Frederick  the  Great,  the  war  that  dug  graves 

for  nearly  a  million  men,  once  and  again,  men,  tired 

of  war,  prayed  for  peace.    But  three  women  in  poli- 

243 


OLD   TIME   AND    YOUNG   TOM 

tics — Catherine  of  Russia,  Maria  Theresa  of  Aus- 
tria, and  Pompadour  of  France — wanted  more  war; 
so  the  war  and  the  grave-digging  went  on.  This 
sort  of  things  isn't  a  matter  of  sex.  While  the  world 
stands  we  shall  never  get  through  the  discussion  of  a 
question  forever  open:  "Who  was  the  more  to 
blame,  Adam  or  Eve  ?" 

The  Three  Graces  are  offset  by  the  Furies,  also 
women,  every  one  of  them.  And  all  the  angels  in 
the  Bible  are  men.  There  is  nothing  in  all  this  world 
a  daughter  of  Eve  resembles  so  closely  as  a  son 
of  Adam.  You  would  think  they  belonged  to  the 
same  race,  as  sometimes  I  am  inclined  to  think  they 
do — by  marriage,  at  least.  It  can,  perhaps,  be 
partially  accounted  for  by  the  fact  that  daughters 
usually  inherit  the  traits  of  the  father,  while  boys 
are  more  apt  to  derive  their  manly  qualities  from 
their  mother. 

But  then,  again,  some  day  you  may  have  pressing 
need  for  a  man  or  woman — crying  need;  you  must 
have  one,  and  one  of  the  right  kind;  solid,  no 
veneer,  pure  gold,  no  tinsel,  no  pinchbeck  article. 
Then,  when  you  get  to  the  market-place,  you  learn 
244 


IN   THE   SLAVE   MARKET 

something  about  men  and  women — a  truth  a  little 
deeper  than  all  the  surface  froth  and  driftwood.  No 
use  wasting  your  time  in  the  market-place,  jingling 
your  money  in  your  hand,  when  you  are  searching 
for  that  kind  of  woman  or  man.  That  is  an  article 
you  can't  buy — not  with  money.  The  woman 
"whose  price  is  far  above  rubies"  isn't  standing  in 
the  market-place,  tagged  with  her  quality  and  price. 
Her  husband  is  known  in  the  gates,  but  "she  looketh 
well  to  the  ways  of  her  household";  "her  children 
rise  up  and  call  her  blessed",  for  they  see  a  great 
deal  more  of  their  mother  than  they  do  of  a  French 
nurse  with  a  Galway  accent. 

There  is  something  that  can't  be  bought  with 
money,  or  title,  fame  or  flattery,  or  threat;  a  real 
man  and  a  real  woman — so  far  above  all  price 
that  you  can  get  them  for  nothing,  if  only  you 
have  a  need  that  is  worthy  of  their  labor,  their 
thought,  their  voice.  Many  of  them  ?  Oh,  plenty ! 
At  least  "seven  thousand — all  the  knees  that  have 
not  bowed  unto  Ba'al,  and  every  mouth  which  hath 
not  kissed  him."  But  you  will  have  to  look  for  them 
at  their  work ;  you'll  not  find  them  idling  about  the 
245 


OLD  TIME   AND   YOUNG  TOM 

market-place.    That's  one  reason  why  they  are  so 
hard  to  find. 

Diogenes,  hunting  about  the  streets  at  noonday 
with  his  lighted  lantern,  looking  for  an  honest  man, 
was  never  farther  away  from  one  than  at  that  very 
time,  although  he  was  carrying  the  lantern  himself. 
He  wasn't  honest,  not  even  with  himself.  He  knew 
very  well  that  the  man  for  whom  he  was  looking 
was  not  loafing  about  the  streets. 


WASTING  OTHER  PEOPLE'S 
TIME 

TIME  was  when  all  the  world,  having  so  much 
longer  to  live  than  it  now  hath,  went  at  its  own 
sweet  will  in  its  own  long  way.  When  a  man  made 
up  his  mind  to  be  a  patriarch  and  live  as  many  years 
as  we  do  months  in  these  degenerate,  "brisk  and 
giddy-paced  times",  he  made  haste  for  naught;  he 
went  to  bed  when  the  stars  came  out,  arose  and  made 
his  ablutions  without  soap  or  water  when  the  sun 
lighted  the  side  of  his  tent.  When  he  traveled  he 
walked ;  where  he  pitched  his  tent  at  night,  there  he 
lived.  When  he  married  he  was  a  duke;  when  his 
first  baby  was  born  that  made  him  a  king;  and  when 
his  eldest  son  married  he  became  a  patriarch,  raised 
a  beard,  quit  hurrying  and  took  things  quietly  for 
the  next  five  or  six  generations. 

Although  there  was  nobody  else  in  all  the  world 
except  himself  and  his  immediate  neighbors,  he  took 
not  the  slightest  interest  in  any  part  of  the  globe 
247 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

save  his  own  pasture-lands,  and  he  would  spend 
three  months  digging  a  well  for  his  stock  when 
there  was  a  river  not  five  miles  farther  on.  He  usu- 
ally traveled  in  a  circle  in  order  to  get  back  to  the 
place  whence  he  started.  The  ass  of  the  Orient  was 
his  baggage  train,  and  the  camel  was  his  trolley,  but 
he  preferred  walking  because  it  was  so  much  slower 
and  took  him  so  much  longer  to  go  from  Haran 
to  Sichem.  A  man  who  was  going  to  live  seven  or 
eight  hundred  years  had  to  figure  on  some  way  of 
putting  in  his  time,  and  if  he  hurried  and  made  all 
haste  day  by  day  he  never  would  get  through  with 
his  spare  time. 

But  times  are  different  since  they  were  changed, 
and  a  noticeable  variation  of  things  and  ways  has 
come  in  with  the  universal  mutation  of  matters  ter- 
restrial. We  have  about  as  much  to  do  as  had  our 
fathers,  but  we  have  far  less  time  to  do  it  in.  Where- 
fore, this  year  let  us  turn  over  a  new  leaf.  If  the 
new  one  isn't  handy  the  same  old  one  will  do  quite 
as  well.  It  got  turned  back  again,  just  about  a  year 
ago,  three  or  four  days  after  we  turned  it  over. 

Let  us  lay  our  hands  upon  our  respective  hearts 
248 


.WASTING   OTHER    PEOPLE'S   TIME 

and  solemnly  resolve:  That  we  will  not  waste  the 
time  for  other  people.  Now  that  is  good  resolution 
enough  for  one  year;  certes,  if  we  can  stick  to  that 
for  a  good  twelvemonth,  then  for  years  to  come  a 
white  square  on  the  calendar  will  mark  the  light  and 
prosperous  footprint  of  the  year  nineteen  hundred 
and  whatever  it  was. 

For  of  a  truth  I  do  not  believe  that  even  people 
who  are  prodigal  with  the  minutes,  wasteful  of  the 
hours  and  spendthrifts  with  the  days,  are  given  over- 
much to  squandering  that  which  is  their  own.  Were 
that  the  head  and  front  of  their  offending,  no  word 
of  censure  or  rebuke  should  they  hear  from  this 
mild  and  gentle-spoken  pulpit  But  never  yet  knew 
I  man  or  woman  reckless  of  time  in  any  way,  who 
scrupled  at  all  to  use  ten  minutes  of  your  precious 
time  to  one  of  his  own  idle  leisure. 

So  frequently  had  I  observed  this  thing,  in  the 
years  of  my  pilgrimage,  that  at  one  time  I  resolved 
that  I  would  never  again  make  the  slightest  effort 
to  be  punctual,  save  only  in  the  matter  of  observing 
an  appointment  with  a  railway  train,  which  loitereth 
not  for  any  man  but  is  gone  as  a  shadow  goes  even 
249 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

at  the  stroke  of  time.  Who  is  it  that  most  suffers 
by  reason  of  the  leisurely  ways  of  the  sluggard? 
The  sluggard?  By  no  means.  Rather  the  man 
or  woman  who  waiteth  for  him.  The  man  who 
riseth  at  five,  intending  to  breakfast  at  six,  but  is 
compelled  to  wait  until  seven-thirty  for  the  sluggard 
— he  is  the  man  who  wastes  precious  time,  or  rather, 
who  hath  it  wasted  for  him  by  the  snores  of  the 
sluggard.  The  wasters  of  time,  under  compulsion, 
are  the  punctual  people.  They  waste  it,  this  price- 
less commodity,  waiting  for  the  good-natured  people 
who  come  loitering  along  by  and  by — "So  sorry  to 
have  kept  you  waiting" — a  mild  type  of  sorrow 
which  causes  not  the  slightest  agony  to  the  sufferer; 
a  sorrow  that  leadeth  never  to  repentance. 

Eight  o'clock  is  the  advertised  hour  for  lectures 
and  various  entertainments  the  world  over.  I  doubt 
very  much  if,  in  all  the  thousands  of  lectures  which 
will  be  poured  out  upon  the  long-suffering  Ameri- 
can people  this  year,  a  dozen  will  begin  at  the  adver- 
tised time.  Anywhere  between  the  hour  set  and  fif- 
teen, twenty,  thirty  minutes  later,  the  chairman  will 
arise  and  forget  his  speech  of  introduction  and  get 
250 


WASTING   OTHER   PEOPLE'S   TIME 

the  initials  of  the  speaker  wrong.  Often  the  lecture 
announced  for  eight  o'cleck  begins  at  eight-forty. 
And  by  that  time  the  punctual  people,  who  were  in 
their  places  at  seven-thirty,  want  to  go  home. 

Don't  talk  to  me  about  the  virtue  of  punctuality. 
I  know  all  about  the  boy  who  came  to  the  bank  to 
apply  for  the  position  of  cashier  and  got  the  place 
because  he  was  so  punctual,  and  married  the  presi- 
dent's daughter,  and  went  into  stocks  and  "got  a 
twist"  on  the  old  man  and  became  president  himself. 
I  know  all  about  him.  Read  about  him  in  my  book 
when  I  was  missing  my  lessons  every  day  at  school. 
Believed  it,  too,  until  I  got  to  be  about  forty  years 
older ;  then  I  grew  a  little  skeptical. 

That  story  is  one  of  the  childish  things  I  put 
away.  That  boy  came  down  to  the  bank  about  six 
o'clock  in  the  morning,  and  hung  around  until  nearly 
eleven,  before  it  dawned  upon  him  that  Good  Friday 
was  a  bank  holiday.  The  next  day  he  came  down  in 
the  afternoon  and  found  that  Saturday  half  holiday 
was  observed  by  all  the  banks  in  all  civilized  lands. 
Then  he  came  down  bright  and  early  Monday  morn- 
ing and  learned  that  the  other  boy  had  met  the  vice- 
251 


OLD   TIME   AND    YOUNG   TOM 

president  at  the  baseball  game  Good  Friday  after- 
noon, and  fixed  it  up  with  him  when  he  was  in  high 
good  humor  and  got  the  "job".  Don't  talk  to  me 
about  punctuality;  it  is  a  bond-slave  to  cunctation. 
The  family  that  comes  late  to  the  lecture  always  has 
its  seats  at  the  other  end  of  the  row,  that  it  may 
trample  on  your  feet,  climb  over  your  knees  and 
scrape  every  bonnet  in  the  front  row  out  of  place  as 
it  scrambles  in.  This  is  to  punish  you  for  your  in- 
flated conceit  about  being  on  time. 
•  The  man  who  comes  late  to  church  always  times 
his  untimely  arrival  so  as  to  smother  the  text.  Oh, 
beloved,  when  you  loiter  it  isn't  your  own  time  you 
are  wasting ;  that  probably  isn't  worth  even  wasting. 
But  think  of  the  time  belonging  to  other  people,  who 
have  in  life  some  work  to  do  other  than  merely  to  sit 
around  in  uncomfortable  and  dismal  places  waiting 
for  you. 

If  I  were  a  Populist,  a  Socialist  and  an  Anarchist 
all  boiled  down  into  one,  I  should  still  be  grateful  to 
the  railway,  monopoly  or  not,  for  teaching  people 
habits  of  punctuality,  and  enforcing  its  doctrine.  It 
has  been  and  is  the  greatest  missionary  of  punctu- 
252 


WASTING   OTHER   PEOPLE'S   TIME 

ality  ever  sent  into  this  irregular  old  world.  People 
— even  the  people  who  start  late  and  arrive  later  on 
all  other  occasions — never  go  to  the  station  at  nine- 
ten,  expecting  thereby  to  take  the  train  leaving  at 
nine-five.  Oh,  they  do,  once,  perhaps  twice;  some 
very  thick-headed  people  try  it  a  third  time.  And  in 
every  community  there  is  at  least  one  family  that 
makes  it  its  habit  and  part  of  its  religion  to  do  this 
as  long  as  it  lives.  You  know  the  family;  it  isn't 
necessary  to  mention  names;  as  the  immortal 
"Sairey"  says,  "Namin'  no  names,  no  offense  can 
betook." 

But  the  vast  majority  of  people  learn  the  railway 
method  of  doing  business  and  time  their  movements 
by  the  big  clock  in  the  station.  The  great  apostle  of 
tardiness,  on  the  other  hand,  is  the  steamboat.  The 
hours  I  have  passed  in  lonely  but  splendidly-ventil- 
ated wharf-boats  on  the  Ohio  and  Mississippi  rivers 
waiting  for  a  boat  that  was  expected  along  sometime 
before  the  river  ran  by,  could  I  have  them  put  to- 
gether, would  give  me  ample  time  to  collect  and 
spend  my  own  endowment  life  insurance. 

Now  this  is  an  age  of  organization.  We  do  every- 
253 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

thing  in  the  way  of  reform  by  organized  work; 
nothing  goes  but  concerted  action ;  we  have  societies 
for  everything  that  we  want  done,  and  don't  care  to 
undertake  on  our  individual  responsibility.  If, 
therefore,  the  young  people — both  because  this  is  the 
young  people's  year,  as  have  been  all  years  that  ever 
were,  and  will  be  all  the  years  that  are  to  come,  and 
because  the  old  folk  are  possibly  too  "sot"  in  their 
ways  to  be  moved  (this  is  not  true;  it  is  merely  as- 
signed as  an  impossible  reason  to  keep  the  other  one 
company ;  the  old  folk  are  the  methodical,  systematic 
and  punctual  class ;  the  less  time  a  man  has,  the  more 
careful  with  it  is  he) — if  the  young  people,  then, 
would  only  postpone  for  another  year  the  organiza- 
tion of  the  "Society  for  Providing  Book-marks  for 
People  Who  Lose  Their  Places  and  Can't  Remem- 
ber How  Far  They  Read,"  and  organize  a  "Society 
for  Punctuality,"  about  eighteen  months  of  good 
work  in  all  lines  of  human  Thought,  with  a  big  T, 
and  activity  with  a  little  a,  might  be  done  this  year. 
"It  is  never  too  late  to  mend,"  but  what  is  the  use 
of  smashing  things  early  in  order  to  mend  them 
later?  Let  us  be  punctual  this  one  year  of  our  lives ; 
254 


.WASTING   OTHER    PEOPLE'S   TIME 

let  us  go  to  church  on  time;  let  us  pay  our  bills 
promptly;  let  us  have  family  prayers  before  we  go 
to  bed,  and  get  up  every  morning  before  breakfast ; 
let  us  keep  our  engagements  or  break  them  alto- 
gether. Let's! 

There  is  an  old  adage,  "Better  late  than  never." 
However,  that  depends.  Napoleon,  we  are  told, 
was  fifteen  minutes  late  beginning  the  battle  of 
Waterloo,  and  that  quarter  of  an  hour  wrote  "Finis" 
to  the  empire  and  opened  a  chapter  entitled  "Saint 
Helena."  Woudn't  "never"  have  answered  the  pur- 
pose quite  as  well,  especially  to  the  few  thousands  of 
Frenchmen  and  Englishmen  who  never  went  any- 
where after  that  battle,  but  stayed  right  there  at 
Mount  Saint  Jean,  in  the  awful  sunken  road  at  La 
Hain,  or  wherever  they  happened  to  be  at  the  mo- 
ment when  Time,  with  all  its  hours  and  quarters, 
went  out  forever  ? 

Isn't  "late"  very  often  the  same  thing  as  "never"  ? 
The  man  who  decided  that  he  would  go  aboard  the 
ark  for  a  cruise  of  a  day  or  two  anyhow,  the  morn- 
ing it  began  to  rain — was  "late"  any  better  than 
"never"  to  that  fellow?  The  "reprieve"  that  comes 
255 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

galloping  and  foaming  and  shouting  along,  just  as 
the  deserter  falls  on  his  face  and  the  smoke  from  the 
muskets  of  the  firing  party  goes  wreathing  up  over 
him — how  much  better  is  that  "late"  than  "never"  ? 
The  five  foolish  virgins  in  the  Good  Book  weren't 
so  very  late,  but  "the  door  was  shut"  just  the  same, 
and  they  might  as  well  have  postponed  that  trip  to 
the  house  where  the  wedding  feast  was  held.  They 
would,  at  least,  have  saved  some  weariness  of  walk- 
ing. I  don't  suppose  their  time  was  worth  saving, 
then.  The  man  who  comes  rushing  up  to  the  bank 
door  five  minutes  after  business  hours  will  find  that 
note  protested  next  morning  just  as  thoroughly 
as  though  he  had  gone  to  the  circus  and  enjoyed 
himself.  The  man  who  fires  himself  down  the  float 
to  see  the  ferry-boat  only  fifteen  feet  away  from  the 
slip  will  wait  for  the  next  boat,  which  will  miss  his 
train,  which  will  put  off  his  wedding  one  day,  which 
will  make  her  so  "mad"  she  will  marry  the  other 
man. 

Did  you  ever  write  a  letter  to  a  dear  friend  whom 
you  had  somewhat  neglected  of  late  because  of  a 
multitude  of  swarming  duties,  and  receive  the  shock 
256 


WASTING   OTHER   PEOPLE'S   TIME 

of  a  telegram  before  your  letter  was  half-way  to  its 
destination,  telling  you  in  the  cold  official  crispness 
of  the  wires,  that  letters  and  silence,  kisses  or 
frowns  were  all  alike  to  the  dead  friend  at  peace 
with  everybody?  "Better  late  than  never!"  It  is 
the  psalm  of  the  tardy  man,  the  golden  text  of  the 
loiterer,  the  creed  of  the  negligent. 

The  late  man  comes  just  in  time  to  misunderstand 
all  that  is  being  said,  because  he  doesn't  know  what 
the  convention  has  been  saying  and  doing  before  he 
came  in.  He  is  good  for  nothing  save  to  mix  things 
up,  to  tangle  suggestions  and  misconstrue  motions, 
and,  true  to  his  habit  of  delay,  he  impedes  business 
so  continually  by  his  repeated  demands  for  informa- 
tion on  things  which  are  clear  to  everybody  else,  that 
all  the  rest  of  the  delegates,  who  came  on  time, 
heartily  wish  he  had  never  come  since  he  must 
come  late. 

The  woman  who  comes  late  to  concert,  theater, 
lecture  or  what  not,  mars  the  pleasure  of  her 
punctual  neighbor  by  whispering  for  all  manner 
of  information:  "Who  is  she?"  "What  num- 
ber are  they  playing  now?"  "Where  are  they  at?" 
257 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

"How  much  have  I  missed?"  "Which  is  Madame 
Hiskreechi?"  "Will  you  let  me  look  at  your  pro- 
gram, please?"  In  a  little  radius  of  half  a  dozen 
chairs  in  all  directions  around  her,  punctual  people 
are  devoutly  wishing  she  had  fallen  down-stairs  and 
broken  her  necktie,  and  so  remained  at  home  with 
the  world  at  least  at  peace  with  her.  I  tell  you,  my 
children,  "late"  isn't  so  very  much  better  than 
"never"  in  many,  many  instances,  and  ofttimes  it  is 
the  same  thing.  That  is  why  we  speak  of  a  dead 
man  as  "the  late"  Mr.  So-and-So.  And  the  late 
man,  in  many,  many  instances,  is  not  any  better,  so 
far  as  his  usefulness  is  concerned  on  that  particular 
occasion,  than  a  dead  man. 

It  isn't  that  you  are  in  people's  way;  it  isn't  that 
your  friendship  isn't  dear,  your  companionship  de- 
lightful, your  presence  as  welcome  as  roses  in  De- 
cember. Because  it  is.  We  can't  see  enough  of  our 
friends.  Two  of  the  best  friends  I  have  on  this 
earth  I  can  sit  beside,  and  if  we  feel  like  it,  con- 
verse by  the  half -hour  with,  without  saying  a  word. 
We  never  get  in  each  other's  way,  and  we  are  never 
conscious  of  trying  to  avoid  so  doing.  We  never 
258 


WASTING   OTHER   PEOPLE'S   TIME 

steal  each  other's  time,  any  more  than  the  sunshine 
crowds  anything  or  anybody  in  the  room  when  it 
fills  it. 

Let  us  respect  the  property  of  other  people 
this  year,  then — the  most  valuable,  alas,  the  only 
property  some  of  us  possess — Time.  Let  us  bear  in 
mind  that  it  is  just  as  easy  to  be  early  as  it  is  to  be 
late;  that  it  is  economy  of  time  to  do  all  the  hurry- 
ing— if  one  must  hurry — in  the  first  quarter  of  the 
hour,  rather  than  at  the  last;  that  any  one  can  get 
anywhere  on  time,  if  only  he  starts  on  time ;  that  the 
sun  set  when  the  almanac  said  it  would  because  it 
rose  on  time.  Let  us  rise  and  repeat  in  unison  the 
golden  text :  "Resolved,  that  we  will  not  waste  the 
time  of  other  people." 


AS  IT  IS  WRITTEN 

A   COMPOSITE   PROBLEM    NOVELETTE 

CALLIOPE  BROADLICKS  arose  from  the  di- 
van where  she  had  been  reclining,  walked  to 
the  window  and  gazed  at  the  sky. 

"Those  cirro-cumulous  clouds,"  she  said,  "usually 
portend  a  low  pressure  over  corresponding  areas  of 
higher  depression  in  similar  altitudes;  if  we  do  not 
have  rain  there  will  be  a  long  dry  spell.  What  were 
you  saying,  Langshanks?"  she  continued,  turning  to 
a  young  man  of  forty-eight,  who  remained  kneeling 
in  a  constrained  attitude  at  the  side  of  the  divan,  mo- 
mentarily resting  himself  upon  the  heels  of  his 
toothpick  shoes,  which  converged  under  his  weight 
like  a  trestle.  Calliope  Broadlicks  wore  square  toes 
and  flat  heels  herself,  else  she  could  not  have  used 
the  dictionary  language  so  fluently. 

"I  was  saying,"  he  replied,  turning  so  as  to  bring 
the  young  woman  into  view,   "that  I  loved  you 
dearly,  fondly,  devotedly ;  that  I  would — " 
260 


AS   IT   IS   WRITTEN 

"I  Know  you  to  be  a  man  of  veracity,"  said  Cal- 
liope. "It  is  merely  necessary,  therefore,  that  you 
make  a  simple  statement  of  what  may  be  termed 
your  feelings,  without  the  addition  of  the  bombastic 
verbiage  of  the  earlier  part  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury. I  also  love  you;  at  least,  I  feel  a  certain 
psychical  affinity  for  you.  But  you  must  not  speak 
to  me  of  marriage.  I  am  going  to  marry  Dachshund 
Sweinfurst." 

"But,"  exclaimed  the  young  man  in  astonishment, 
"I  thought  you  hated  him." 

"I  detest  him,"  replied  Calliope,  "I  shudder  with 
unutterable  loathing  when  he  approaches  me.  But 
for  that  reason  I  must  marry  him.  We  do  not  begin 
to  live  until  we  begin  to  suffer.  I  shall  suffer ;  then 
I  shall  live." 

"But  Sweinfurst — ?"  began  young  Langshanks 
breathlessly. 

"He  also  will  suffer,"  said  Calliope.  "I  will  see 
to  that.  Then  his  life  will  be  transformed,  and  I 
shall  love  him." 

"I  am  dumb  with  grief,"  moaned  the  young  man. 
"And  when  are  you  to  be  married  ?" 
261 


OLD   TIME   AND   .YOUNG   TOM 

"The  next  time  I  see  him,"  Calliope  replied ;  "-be- 
cause I  can  not  live  without  you  much  longer." 

"Oh,  I  see !    And  after  marriage,  then  ?" 

"I  am  coming  to  live  with  you.  Why,  otherwise, 
should  I  marry  Dachshund  Sweinfurst?" 

"But,"  protested  the  young  man  feebly,  with  a 
cloud  of  bewilderment  gathering  upon  his  brow, 
"would  it  not,  then,  be  better  to  marry  me  in  the 
first  place  ?" 

"And  live  without  a  motive?"  she  answered  im- 
patiently. "Langshanks,  you  have  no  soul.  You 
are  a  back  number.  You  would  calmly  sit  down  and 
sink  our  lives  in  a  stagnant  pool  of  dull  respect- 
ability, live  decently  and  honestly  as  our  grand- 
fathers did,  and  bring  children  into  the  world  who 
would  not  emigrate  and  change  their  names  as  soon 
as  they  were  old  enough  to  know  anything  about  us  ? 
And  I  thought  you  were  a  man  whom  I  could  love !" 
she  cried,  clenching  her  hands  until  the  nails  printed 
themselves  upon  the  palm.  "Oh,  what  a  fool  I  have 
been!" 

"Darling!"  he  cried,  "I—" 

"Don't  call  me  names!"  she  menaced  him  with 
262 


AS   IT   IS   WRITTEN 

her  flashing  eyes.  "Do  you  know  what  I  am  going 
to  do  with  you?  I  am  going  to  make  you  as  utterly 
miserable  as  I  myself  will  be;  I  will  embitter  your 
life  with  undeserved  sorrow ;  I  will  cloud  your  ways 
with  defeat  and  despair;  I  will  fill  your  cup  with 
disappointment,  and  then  will  you  learn  to  love  me 
as  I  deserve  to  be  loved." 


II 

"TWO  FOR  THE  SHOW" 

"And  this  is  our  home?"  Calliope  gazed  about 
the  shabby  room  with  a  disappointed  air.  It  was 
plainly  but  not  ostentatiously  furnished  with  the 
trunk  which  she  had  taken  the  foresight  to  bring 
with  her.  There  had  been  a  bedstead  in  the  corner, 
but  Langshanks  had  broken  up  all  the  slats  for  fire- 
wood. 

"Doctor  Lierbier  says,  in  his  Evolution  of  the 
Family,  that  nothing  in  this  world  has  brought  so 
much  unhappiness  and  misery  into  homes  as  mov- 
able bed  slats,"  Langshanks  remarked  explanatorily. 
263 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

"Langshanks,"  she  said,  with  a  bitter  smile,  "you 
are  suspicious,  ungenerously  suspicious."  And  then 
she  added :  "This  is  not  like  the  home  which  I  have 
left  to  come  to  you." 

"No,"  he  said,  "I  fancy  it  is  not.  You  lived  in 
the  lap  of  elegant  luxury,  I  know." 

"Yes,"  she  said,  "I  was  smothered  with  affluence. 
Is  this  the  only  room  you  have?" 

"It  is,"  replied  Langshanks,  "and  there  isn't  an- 
other one  to  be  had  in  this  building.  I  selected  this 
location  to  checkmate  any  move  on  the  part  of  your 
mother  toward  domiciling  herself  with  us." 

"You  crossed  a  bridge  before  you  came  to  it, 
then,"  she  responded  with  the  calmness  of  one  who 
is  conscious  of  being  correct.  "My  mother  disap- 
proved of  the  step  I  was  about  to  take  in  coming 
here,  and  I  poisoned  her  last  week." 

"Good  enough!"  cried  Langshanks.  "Did  she 
leave  you  anything?" 

"Nothing  but  her  burial  money — seventy-five  dol- 
lars. She  had  an  old-fashioned  notion  that  she 
would  like  to  be  buried  in  a  mahogany  coffin." 

"Nonsense,"  replied  the  young  man.  "I  can  get 
264 


AS   IT   IS   WRITTEN 

her  cremated  at  the  gas  works  for  five  dollars. 
Gimme  the  spuds." 

He  took  the  money  and  went  out.  He  did  not 
return  for  three  days.  And  when  he  did  come  home 
he  was  carrying  a  full-flavored  jag,  all  wool  and  a 
yard  wide,  on  both  shoulders.  He  fell  all  the  way 
down-stairs  with  it  twice  before  he  got  half-way  up 
once.  And  at  last,  with  the  philosophical  indiffer- 
ence of  a  man  who  does  not  know  what  he  is  doing, 
and  doesn't  care  how  he  does  it,  he  fell  asleep  on  the 
landing  outside  the  door.  His  trance  lasted  until 
the  following  morning.  Then,  entering  his  room,  he 
found  it  empty.  A  note  wrapped  on  the  handle  of 
the  water-pitcher  (pronounced  jug)  attracted  his 
wandering  gaze.  It  was  written  in  Calliope's  well- 
known  advanced  chirography,  diagonally  across  the 
paper,  eight  or  ten  words  to  the  page,  no  date,  and 
the  signature  crowded  off  to  the  top  of  the  table. 

"'I  have  gone  to  live  with  your  uncle,  George 
Meadowlark.  I  shall  be  sorry  if  this  step  gives  you 
pain,  but  that  will  be  good  for  both  of  us.  More- 
over, it  will  teach  you  not  to  lie  around  the  house  all 
day,  and  to  give  a  woman  some  little  time  to  herself. 
265 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

Your  Uncle  George  is  secretary  of  the  Society  for 
the  Higher  Domesticity  of  the  Homes  of  the  Upper 
Middle  Classes;  consequently  I  will  not  see  him  at 
home  oftener  than  twice  or  three  times  a  month, 
when  he  will  want  a  clean  shirt. 

"P.  S. — The  key  is  under  the  door-mat.  When 
you  go  out,  leave  some  milk  in  a  saucer  for  the  cat. 
Bow  the  shutters,  and  be  sure  you  leave  the  fly 
screens  in." 

Langshanks  caught  himself  by  the  hair  with  both 
hands  and  led  himself  up  and  down  the  room  several 
times. 

"This  will  break  my  heart!"  he  exclaimed 
hoarsely.  Presently  he  added :  "And  I  believe  that 
is  the  only  thing  about  me  that  isn't  broke." 

He  paused  in  his  restless  pacing,  felt  in  all  his 
pockets,  turning  them  inside  out,  amid  a  little 
shower  of  broken  cigars,  cloves,  bits  of  chalk,  and 
general  debris. 

"Nit!"  he  exclaimed,  as  the  investigation  closed 

and  the  committee  rose,  "I  fear  me  that  I  will  dine 

at  the  sign  of  the  Barmecide,  and  visit  the  pump  for 

my  bracer.    I  will  go  to  Dachshund  Sweinfurst,  and 

266 


AS    IT   IS   WRITTEN 

tell  him  that  his  wife  has  basely  deserted  me,  and 
that  I  am  a  deeply  injured  man.  This  should  create 
between  us  a  bond  of  mutual  sympathy.  It  seems  to 
me  that  he  is  bound  either  to  give  me  the  satisfaction 
of  a  man  of  honor,  or  offer  some  reparation  to  my 
lacerated  feelings.  However,  he  is  not  a  man  of 
much  soul,  and  it  may  be  that  the  events  which  have 
succeeded  his  marriage  have  disturbed  him.  He 
always  impressed  me  as  a  man  who  was  born  with 
emotions,  and  had  not  acquired  sufficient  poise  to 
eradicate  them  from  his  system." 


Ill 

"THREE  TO  MAKE  READY" 

"Why  do  you  drive  a  one-eyed  horse,  George 
Meadowlark?"  asked  Calliope  on  one  of  those  rare 
occasions  when  she  met  her  new  husband,  and  went 
driving  with  him  to  render  the  occasion  less  irksome 
and  irritating. 

"I  did  not  always  do  so,"  replied  George  Meadow- 
lark,  reaching  toward  the  whip  with  a  tenderness 
267 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG  JOM 

th'at  was  habitual  with  him ;  "but  one  day  last  week 
the  brute  shied  at  a  road  roller  and  I  burned  his  eye 
out  with  a  red-hot  poker.  If  he  shies  at  anything 
on  the  other  side  I  will  gouge  his  other  eye  out  with 
a  nail  grab,  and  then  he  will  quit  his  foolishness. 
Brute  or  human,  woman  or  man,"  he  added,  pinning 
Calliope  with  his  steel-gray  eyes,  "no  living  creature 
wants  to  monkey  with  your  Uncle  George  when  he 
has  his  war-paint  on.  Do  you  remark  yonder 
wretch  with  one  ear,  slinking  around  the  corner  to 
avoid  my  gaze?"  he  continued. 

Calliope  saw  the  man,  who  was  wearing  crutches 
and  had  his  head  bandaged.  "I  see  him,"  she  said, 
perceiving  that  evasion  was  useless. 

"Well,"  said  George  Meadowlark,  "he  was  a  case 
brought  before  our  society.  He  has  a  splendid  wife ; 
one  of  the  most  grandly  unselfish  and  progressive 
women  in  this  universe.  She  had  been  married  but 
five  times  when  she  met  this  fellow  and  bestowed 
herself  upon  him.  Well,  I  went  to  their  house  and 
found  him  making  gruel  for  a  sick  child  when  his 
wife  was  pining  for  a  trip  to  Catalina  Island.  I  beat 
him  with  a  brass-handled  poker  until  I  left  him 
268 


AS   IT   IS   WRITTEN 

the  wreck  you  see,  and  we  have  had  no  trouble  with 
him  since." 

"George  Meadowlark!"  exclaimed  Calliope, 
moved  beyond  control  by  an  impulse  she  could  not 
explain,  "I  love  you !" 

"Rats !"  said  George  Meadowlark. 

And  Calliope  worshiped  him. 

"Here,"  she  said  to  her  wondering  heart,  "is  the 
man  in  all  the  world  for  me." 


IV 
"AND  FOUR  FOR  TO  GO!" 

Calliope  reflectively  tapped  the  sole  of  the  long- 
pointed  shoe  she  held  in  her  hand  with  the  end  of 
her  blacking  brush. 

"George  Meadowlark  is  a  king  of  men,"  she  said 
— "a  strong  womanly  man,  with  one  weakness.  He 
is  the  vainest  masculine  woman  that  ever  wore 
bloomers.  I  will  make  his  shoes  fit  him  a  little  more 
fondly  than  ever  they  did,  and  that  will  distract  his 
mind  so  that  he  will  not  feel  my  departure  so  keenly. 
269 


OLD   TIME   AND    YOUNG   TOM 

For  I  have  it  in  my  mind  to  go  back  to  Dachshund 
Sweinfurst,  and  see  how  he  stacks  up  since  his  suc- 
cessor crowded  him  on  to  the  reef." 

Thus  speaking,  she  poured  into  the  shoes  a  pre- 
scription from  her  own  formula  of  mucilage,  vox 
hooperup,  clamavi  extravagans  and  stuff  caloricus. 
Then  she  went  out  and  walked  in  the  direction  of 
her  old  home,  saying:  "George  will  not  at  science 
laugh  when  that  impression  by  both  feet  takes  of 
him  a  lead-pipe  cinch,  once. 

"I  am  so  glad,"  she  communed  with  herself  as 
she  walked,  "that  we  all  live  so  near  to  one  another. 
I  must  pass  Langshanks'  door.  I  will  drop  in  and 
ask  him  to  accompany  me  if  he  likes.  I  wish  that  he 
and  my  husband  might  be  friends." 

Edouard  Langshanks  was  at  home.  He  was  hard 
at  work  on  his  new  poem,  The  Incarnation  of 
Purity,  but  he  at  once  dismissed  the  typewriter, 
turned  his  cuffs  and  was  ready  to  accompany  Cal- 
liope. 

"I  shall  be  glad  to  go,"  he  said.  "I  have  called  on 
Dachshund  Sweinfurst  but  once  since  your  second 
marriage.  He  did  not  say  he  was  glad  to  see  me, 
270 


AS   IT   IS   WRITTEN 

nor  did  he  say  that  he  was  not.  He  leaned  out  of  a 
second-story  window  when  he  heard  my  voice  at  the 
front  door,  shot  at  me  twice,  and  started  down  the 
fire-escape ;  but  I  did  not  wait.  I  so  dislike  scenes." 

"Who  is  that  female  creature?"  asked  Calliope, 
coldly  eying  the  departing  figure  of  the  typewriter, 
who  was  perhaps  sixteen  years  younger  than  her- 
self, rather  prettier,  and  much  better  dressed. 

Langshanks  made  no  reply,  and  Calliope  con- 
tinued :  "I  do  not  like  her.  I  should  think,  Edouard 
Langshanks,  if  you  had  no  pride  in  yourself  you 
might  have  sufficient  respect  for  me  not  to  employ  a 
female  amanuensis." 

"But,"  gasped  the  astonished  Langshanks, 
"you — " 

"It  is  not  a  question  of  me,"  she  said  severely.  "I 
once  loved  you.  That  should  be  forever  an  inspira- 
tion, a  guide,  and  a  restraint  for  you,  in  this  world 
and  in  the  next.  If  you  retain  that  girl  in  your 
employ,  I  will  come  back  and  live  with  you  myself. 
After,  of  course,  I  have  reconciled  Sweinfurst  to  my 
coming  back  to  him." 

Edouard  Langshanks  shuddered. 
271 


OLD  TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

"She  goes,"  he  muttered  hoarsely. 

As  they  stood  at  the  door  of  the  Sweinfurst  man- 
sion the  master  of  the  house  suddenly  burst  forth 
on  them  and  laid  hold  of  Langshanks  by  the  throat 
\vith  one  hand  while  he  felt  for  his  knife  with  the 
other. 

"Dachshund  Sweinfurst,"  said  Calliope,  with  a 
disgust  she  was  ill  able  to  dissemble,  "I  always  de- 
tested you;  I  hated  you  from  my  first  sight  of  you. 
If  you  continue  acting  in  this  emotional  manner  it 
will  end  in  my  disliking  you." 

At  that  instant  a  distraction  occurred.  George 
Meadowlark  came  leaping  and  prancing  down  the 
street.  His  face  was  livid  with  agony  and  he 
shrieked  as  he  bounded  into  the  little  group. 

"George  Meadowlark,"  said  Calliope  calmly, 
"control  yourself.  Are  you  aware  that  you  impress 
every  one  who  sees  you  with  the  belief  that  you  are 
giving  way  to  your  feelings?" 

But  George  Meadowlark  grasped  her  by  the  hair, 

which  unexpectedly  held  fast,  and  beat  her  brains 

out  upon  the  door-step,  while  Dachshund  Sweinfurst 

was  cutting  the  heart  out  of  Edouard  Langshanks. 

272 


AS   IT   IS   WRITTEN 

As  He  rose  from  the  completion  of  this  hasty  and  ill- 
advised  act,  George  Meadowlark  leaped  upon  him 
with  both  feet  and  caved  his  ribs  in  before  he  could 
say  the  multiplication  table.  He  then  closed  this 
unseemly  exhibition  of  emotion  by  falling  down- 
stairs backward  and  breaking  his  neck. 


"JUMP!" 

"Do  they  all  come  in?"  asked  one  of  the  angels 
who  escorted  the  mis-assorted  quartet  to  the  gates  of 
pearl. 

And  the  bearers  wiped  the  beaded  perspiration 
from  their  brows,  for  it  was  the  heaviest  load  they 
had  carried  to  Heaven  since  Robert  Browning 
brought  in  Judas  Iscariot  with  a  martyr's  crown  on 
his  head. 

"Yes,"  replied  Saint  Peter,  "bring  them  all  in; 

that's  the  amended  constitution.    Somehow  or  other, 

some  way  or  other,  some  time  or  other,  it  all  comes 

around  kind  of  right,  and  everybody  who  has  been 

273 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

wicked  enough  to  deserve  it  gets  in  here  on  equal 
terms.  It's  all  right." 

"How  about  the  other  place,  then  ?"  asked  one  of 
the  angelic  messengers. 

"Oh,"  replied  the  saint,  "haven't  you  heard? 
Everything  is  changed  down  below;  fires  banked; 
lake  boarded  over  for  a  skating  rink;  and  they  are 
getting  up  the  scenery  for  a  long  run  with  Trilby, 
Hearts  Insurgent  and  Casa  Bracclo.  Bring  them 
in." 

'As  the  Happy  shades  passed  inside,  a  gaunt  hol- 
low-eyed missionary,  who  had  died  of  starvation, 
jungle-fever,  and  tiger-bite  in  the  heart  of  a  wilder- 
ness of  heathendom,  where  he  had  preached  and 
wrought  for  thirty-seven  years,  tried  to  get  in  with 
them.  But  the  saint  firmly,  although  not  unkindly, 
barred  his  way. 

"Now,  see  here,  my  friend,"  he  said  kindly,  "don't 
you  know  this  won't  do  at  all?  You've  been  told 
that  often  enough."  Turning  to  the  angel  who  ac- 
companied the  man,  he  said :  "This  fellow  has  been 
making  trouble  on  the  earth  all  his  life;  he  has  com- 
bated some  of  the  oldest  notions  and  hoariest  re- 
274 


AS   IT   IS   WRITTEN 

ligions ;  he  has  disturbed  men's  consciences  and  un- 
settled their  convictions  and  distracted  their  minds 
until  whole  communities  among  the  most  cultured 
and  progressive  districts  in  western  China,  the 
Congo  Valley  and  central  Tartary  have  cried  out 
against  him,  to  say  nothing  of  New  York  and  Chi- 
cago. 

"Why,  I've  known  men  killed  when  I  was  on  the 
earth  for  preaching  the  very  doctrines  this  man  has 
been  teaching.  We  can't  have  him  in  here.  Those 
people  who  just  went  in  wouldn't  stay  with  us  ten 
minutes  if  we  began  letting  in  preachers,  Sunday- 
school  teachers,  and  that  sort  of  people.  Now,  go 
away,"  he  continued,  turning  to  the  disappointed  ap- 
plicant, "that's  a  good  fellow;  go  back  to  the  earth 
if  you  can't  do  any  better,  and  see  if  you  can't  get  a 
chance  to  try  it  over  again.  Then  you  can  get  rid 
of  your  old-fashioned  notions,  adopt  progressive 
ideas,  run  away  with  another  man's  wife,  let  the 
heathen  alone,  and  commit  enough  deviltry  to  en- 
title you  to  some  sort  of  recognition  here  on  the 
modern  basis." 

And  the  gate  closed  in  the  missionary's  face. 


TALKING  WITH   THE 
MOUTH 

SAID  the  wisest  Teacher  in  all  history,  "By  thy 
words  thou  shalt  be  justified,  and  by  thy  words 
thou  shalt  be  condemned."  The  average  man  tells 
his  business,  his  ambitions,  his  politics,  his  plans, 
when  he  is  most  anxious  to  conceal  them,  by  the 
very  language  of  his  denial.  I  recall  an  incident 
during  the  siege  of  Vicksburg;  two  scouts  from 
Grant's  army  were  stopped  by  a  Confederate  patrol 
east  of  the  Black  River,  in  an  enemy's  lines. 
"Where  are  you  going?"  was  the  challenge.  "To 
Black  River  Bridge,"  replied  the  Union  scout.  The 
questioner  turned  to  his  comrades.  "He's  a  Yank," 
he  said,  and  they  nodded,  and  led  him  away  to  be 
shot.  All  the  Union  soldiers  called  that  crossing 
"Black  River  Bridge."  All  the  southerners  gen- 
eralized it  as  "the  Big  Black."  "Shibboleth"  didn't 
go  out  of  use  in  the  days  of  the  Judges. 

A  man  has  no  need  to  declare  in  one  word  the 
political  party  with  which,  brain  and  hand  and  soul, 
276 


TALKING  WITH  THE   MOUTH 

He  is  affiliated.  You  have  no  need  to  talk  politics 
with  him  to  ascertain  that  much.  You  enter  into  a 
general  conversation  with  him.  You  carefully  avoid 
politics,  because  you  are  strangers,  and  you  don't 
want  the  journey  made  disagreeable  by  a  political 
wrangle.  You  begin  by  cautiously  approving  the 
weather — not  absolutely  and  unqualifiedly  indors- 
ing it,  but  in  a  general  way,  as  a  mere  creature  of 
this  planet,  admitting  that  in  a  record  extending 
over  seven  thousand  years,  the  Almighty  has  meas- 
ured out  rain  and  sunshine  to  the  insuring  of  annual 
crops,  with  regular  harvests  ample  for  the  needs  of 
all  his  creatures,  from  man  to  sparrows. 

And  the  stranger  cordially  approves  the  weather. 
His  eyes  shine  when  you  talk  wheat,  and  he  tells  you 
what  he  got  for  his.  A  smoking  mill-stack  suggests 
labor,  and  he  talks  enthusiastically  about  that,  be- 
cause one  of  his  boys  is  earning  five  dollars  a  day  in 
a  steel  mill,  and  the  other  is  master  machinist  in 
some  railroad  shops.  They  have  an  easier  time  than 
he  had,  he  says,  but  their  hands  are  just  about  as 
hard  as  his,  though  not  so  knobby.  And  he  had  a 
much  better  time  than  their  grandfather  had.  He 
277 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

rejoices  to  think  how  much  easier  and  better  labor- 
saving  machinery  has  made  life  for  the  worker.  The 
sunshine  is  full  of  blessing  for  him.  The  clouds  are 
big  with  promise.  He  is  glad  to  think  that  in  its 
thirty  million  dollars'  worth  of  products  one  year, 
Southern  California  could  count  only  six  million 
dollars  from  the  gold-mines.  He  says  we  only  need 
gold  enough  to  pay  for  what  we  grow  and  make. 

The  train  runs  by  a  foul  nest  of  hobos,  lounging 
under  the  shadow  of  a  water-tank,  waiting  for  a 
freight  train  to  come  along  that  they  may  "beat" 
their  way  to  the  next  feeding  place.  In  reply  to 
your  sympathetic  remark  that  there  is  so  much 
poverty  and  misery  in  the  world,  he  replies  that 
he  must  have  fed  about  fifty  of  those  fellows  last 
year,  when  he  was  crying  for  men  to  work  on  his 
ranch.  He  adds  that  if  anybody  in  his  neighbor- 
hood went  hungry  for  one  day,  nobody  knew  of  it. 
The  cry  of  human  misery  would  empty  his  pockets, 
but  he  does  not  appear  to  go  maudlin  over  the  spec- 
tacle of  organized  laziness. 

Hopefulness  and  good  cheer  sing  through  all 
278 


TALKING   WITH   THE   MOUTH 

his  talk.  The  sight  of  a  flag,  gleaming  like  a  blos- 
som among  the  trees  as  it  flutters  from  the  cupola 
of  a  country  schoolhouse,  brings  a  new  light  into 
his  eyes,  and  he  bends  to  look  at  it  as  long  as  the 
train  holds  it  in  sight;  the  look  in  his  eyes,  on  his 
face,  is  proud,  and  there  is  not  even  one  convulsive 
effort  to  blush  for  "the  flag  that  has  never  known 
defeat,"  and  on  the  gleaming  stripes  of  which  he 
can  read  "Valley  Forge,"  "Trenton,"  "Saratoga," 
"Bunker  Hill,"  "Yorktown."  Now,  you  are  not 
going  to  waste  words,  asking  that  man  his  politics. 
You  know  them  as  well  as  you  know  your  own, 
though  the  subject  of  politics  hasn't  been  so  much  as 
hinted  at. 

But  he  gets  off  at  his  station,  and  another  man 
drops  into  the  seat  by  your  side.  You  send  up  the 
usual  signal — a  weather  rocket.  The  new  man 
groans.  He  looks  out  of  the  window  and  sees  the 
country  all  "burned  up."  How  is  it  in  his  section? 
you  ask.  He  groans  again.  "All  drowned  out," 
he  says.  "Hain't  seen  the  sun  for  twenty  days. 
[What's  in  the  ground  is  rotting,  and  what's  on  top 
279 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

of  the  ground  is  blighted."  Him?  oh,  he's  just 
traveling  around,  right  now,  looking  for  a  new  loca- 
tion. 

He  was  in  a  little  general-merchandise  business 
in  Ohio,  but  it  didn't  pay.  Competition  too  strong. 
Everybody  cutting  one  another's  throats.  Then 
he  went  to  Indiana;  traded  for  a  sawmill.  No 
money  in  it.  Moved  to  Illinois,  and  bought  a  fruit 
farm.  Had  three  bad  years,  and  traded  for  an  in- 
terest in  a  furniture  factory  in  Michigan.  Too 
crowded;  every  other  town  in  Michigan  had  one. 
Sold  out  and  bought  a  timber  tract  in  Minnesota. 
Couldn't  compete  with  Canada  lumber;  no  protec- 
tion for  American  industry.  Traded  for  a  Dakota 
wheat  farm.  Stood  one  year  of  drouth  and  one  of 
hail-storms,  and  sold  out.  Bought  a  cattle  ranch  in 
Montana.  Not  enough  money  in  the  country  to 
handle  his  business ;  all  the  money  in  the  banks  and 
trusts.  Traded  off  his  cattle  and  land  for  a  beet- 
sugar  investment  in  Nebraska.  Could  have  done 
fairly  well,  but  there  was  no  money  in  the  country. 
Everything  controlled  by  eastern  sharks. 

Sold  out  and  got  some  cotton  land  in  Texas,  in  the 
280 


TALKING   WITH   THE   MOUTH 

Red  River  country.  Cotton  never  saw  seven  cents 
that  year.  Lot  of  sharks  and  trusts,  and  big  com- 
bines, all  against  him.  Traded  for  a  mine  in  New 
Mexico.  A  whole  solid  mountain  of  ore,  and  it 
wasn't  worth  the  handling;  everything  dead  against 
him.  Sold  it  for  what  he  could  get,  and  came  out 
here,  and  now  he  was  looking  around  for  a  chance  to 
get  rid  of  what  he  had  and  locate  somewhere  else; 
didn't  care  particularly  where,  so  that  it  was  some 
place  where  he  could  have  a  chance.  Didn't  believe 
there  was  such  a  place  for  a  man  with  limited  means. 
Everything  in  the  hands  of  the  big  combines.  He'd 
lived  in  eleven  states  in  twelve  years,  and  one  was 
about  as  bad  as  the  other.  Farms  all  mortgage-rid- 
den. Factories  closed,  or  men  working  on  starva- 
tion wages.  Country  overrun  with  men  hunting 
work,  and  no  work  for  anybody.  Crime  on  the  in- 
crease. Insane  asylums  overflowing.  Almshouses 
crowded.  Children  crying  for  bread.  No  signs  of 
any  betterment  in  the  condition  of  things,  either. 
If  it  wasn't  that  they  were  just  as  bad  as  they  pos- 
sibly could  be,  the  signs  are  that  they  would  be 
worse  before  they  would  be  better.  Now,  you  are 
281 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

not  going  to  ask  that  man  how  he  is  going  to  vote. 
You  haven't  said  politics  to  him,  but  you  know  very 
well  what  party  he  trains  with. 

So,  you  see,  son,  though  you  should  control  your 
lips  and  hold  your  tongue  and  talk  ever  so  little, 
people  would  be  very  apt  to  find  out  a  great  deal 
about  you  from  what  you  did  say,  and  as  well,  from 
what  you  don't  say.  In  fact,  I  think  the  man  who 
says  the  least  puts  the  most  of  himself  into  his  la- 
conic condensations.  Grant  the  Silent  wrote  his 
magnanimous  character  across  the  pages  of  his 
country's  history  when  he  said,  "Let  us  have  peace." 
And  Lincoln  the  Great  wrote  his  life  in  the  sen- 
tence, "With  malice  toward  none,  with  charity  ,for 
all." 

It  is  a  great  thing  for  you  to  learn  to  say  the 
right  thing  at  the  right  time,  in  the  right  way.  And 
"how  long  will  it  take  you  to  learn  to  do  that?"  Oh, 
I  don't  know.  It  depends  on  how  diligently  you 
apply  yourself  to  learning  to  talk.  Possibly  in  about 
forty-five  or  fifty  years,  I  should  say.  Or,  it  might 
be  at  twenty-five.  You  need  not  say  much,  just  a 
sentence  or  two.  Because,  on  earth,  as  it  is  in 
282 


TALKING   WITH   THE   MOUTH 

Heaven,  a  man — or  a  woman — is  not  heard  for  his 
much  speaking.  You  see,  the  men  and  women  who 
are  remembered  for  what  they  said,  were  people 
whose  lives  grew  to  the  thought  that  was  clothed  in 
words,  who  had  very  little  thought  concerning  the 
aptness  of  the  phrase,  but  much  for  the  life  and 
character  that  was  father  to  the  words.  This  is  an 
age  of  "wonders"  of  beginning.  What  you  want  to 
do  is  to  keep  right  on.  My  desk  is  daily  littered  with 
circulars  from  all  sorts  of  agents  and  bureaus  bring- 
ing before  the  notice  of  the  not-overly-eager  people 
all  manner  of  youthful  phenomena.  Here  is  a  "girl 
dialect  reader" — and  a  fearful  and  wonderful  thing 
a  "girl  dialect"  must  be;  you  hear  it  occasionally 
on  the  trolley-cars — who  pronounces  at  sight  the 
fearful  and  wonderful  spelling  you  see — but  never 
try  to  pronounce — in  the  magazines  stories,  which 
are  supposed  to  represent  the  language  of  the  be- 
nighted people  living  in  the  adjoining  state. 

That  girl's  organs  of  phonation  must  be  gnarled 

and  twisted  like  a  pretzel,  if  they  can  render  some  of 

these  dialect  stories  aloud.     Her  face  must  be  a 

study  during  her  reading.    It  must  impress  one  that 

283 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

she  is  training  for  a  gum-chewing  contest.  And 
here  is  a  new  "boy  orator,"  who  orates  on  any  given 
theme  with  much  shrill  sound  and  varied  sense. 
Principally  accents.  And  here,  there,  and  every- 
where are  "boy  preachers"  startling  the  world  with 
new  strange  light,  such  as  never  was  on  sea  or  land 
it  is  hoped,  and  never  will  be  again,  on  simple  texts, 
such  texts  as  the  angels  have  desired  to  look  into, 
but  have  refrained,  probably  knowing  that  the  "boy 
preacher"  would  come  along  some  day  and  make  it 
all  plain,  even  to  the  angelic  understanding. 

Now,  I  like  to  see  you  taking  hold  of  the  world's 
work  in  deadly  earnest,  and  I  do  want  to  see  you 
do  it  so  well  that  the  rest  of  us  will  have  nothing 
to  do  about  it  but  sit  in  the  audience  and  applaud 
and  call  for  encores.  But,  dear  me,  the  wonder  is 
what  becomes  of  the  "wonders"  when  they  grow 
up.  Many  of  these  "child  wonders"  were  in  print 
when  your  grandfather  was  teaching  me  to  crow, 
and  I  am  no  spring  chicken  by  several  layers  of  mus- 
cular tissue.  I  am  now  filed  away  among  the  back 
numbers,  taken  down  and  dusted  only  when  some- 
body is  looking  up  some  long- forgotten  "bygone". 
284 


TALKING   WITH   THE   MOUTH 

But  year  by  year  these  circulars  of  the  "child  won- 
der" come  in  my  mail  with  the  same  old  pictures, 
only  they  have  been  changed  from  the  old  woodcut 
to  the  unwrinkled  and  expressionless  half-tone  of 
eternal  youth.  And  that,  I  consider,  is  overdoing 
the  child  business.  You  see,  son,  there  is  no  such 
thing  as  a  "boy  orator."  You  can't  find  the  word 
in  the  dictionary.  There  is  just  an  orator,  or  a  poet, 
or  a  preacher;  boy,  girl,  woman  or  man,  as  it  may 
happen.  A  sapling  is  valuable  merely  because  it 
isn't  going  to  be  a  sapling  very  long.  If  it  continues 
to  be  a  sapling,  it  goes  to  the  cooper  shop  and  is 
adzed  into  a  hoop-pole,  and  is  used  to  hold  a  barrel 
together  that  contains  pork,  or  molasses.  Or  some- 
thing. Generally  something. 

If  a  boy  doesn't  quit  being  a  boy  by  the  time  he  is 
old  enough  to  help  elect  a  president  of  the  United 
States,  I  am  afraid  that  the  boy  habit  is  confirmed 
in  him,  and  he  will  go  down  to  his  grave,  white- 
haired  and  toothless,  known  as  the  "boy-something- 
or-other."  And  all  that  time,  you  see,  there  will  be 
a  man  lacking  in  the  world,  just  because  that  young- 
ster didn't  make  a  mighty  effort  and  break  himself 
285 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

of  the  habit  of  being  a  boy  before  he  became  hope- 
lessly addicted  to  it.  If  the  sapling  does  what  is  ex- 
pected of  it,  and  what  God  intended  it  should  do,  it 
will  soon  cease  to  be  a  sapling,  and  grow  to  a  mighty 
tree,  gnarled  and  scarred  with  a  thousand  hard 
fights  with  storm  and  tempest,  and  all  the  grander 
and  nobler  for  the  struggles  and  conquests.  So  keep 
on  growing,  son,  and  don't  be  afraid  of  saying  what 
you  think  now,  for  fear  you  may  make  some  mis- 
take. 

Why,  you  will,  whether  you  talk  or  keep  silent. 
Mistakes?  Why,  they  are  sometimes  a  means  of 
grace.  One  day  on  the  train,  going  from  Some- 
where to  Somewherelse,  the  conductor  came  along, 
looked,  and  said  bruskly,  "Tikt !" 

"Oh,"  I  told  him,  "the  other  conductor  took  up 
my  ticket." 

Where  was  I  going?  I  told  him.  Then  he  said 
I  had  a  coupon  ticket,  if,  he  added,  with  a  cloud  of 
suspicion  lowering  on  his  brow,  I  had  any,  and  the 
other  conductor  only  tore  off  the  coupon. 

I  insisted  that  he  had  lifted  the  entire  shooting- 
match,  as  it  were,  and  had  left  me  in  my  present  un- 
286 


TALKING   WITH   THE   MOUTH 

protected  and  uncredentialed  condition,  wandering 
over  the  country  without  any;  checks  on  my  baggage 
or  conduct. 

But  he  knew  better  than  that,  because  he  knew 
that  conductor.  My  fare  to  Somewhere  would  be 
"somenny".  There  is  no  argument  that  prevails  with 
a  conductor  like  cash  fare,  so  I  meekly  unloaded, 
but  besought  him  to  wire  back  for  my  lost  ticket ! 

In  an  hour  he  came  back  to  me.  He  gave  me  back 
my  money ;  he  said  the  other  conductor  had  made  a 
mistake.  But  he  maintained  his  own  position  by 
saying  that  he  had  been  with  that  man  on  the  road 
for  seventeen  years,  and  he  had  never  before  known 
him  to  make  the  slightest  mistake. 

And  I  said  that  I  had  known  myself  less  or  more 
accurately  for  more  than  fifty  years,  and  if  I 
should  go  to  bed  some  night  and  there  remember 
that  I  hadn't  made  a  mistake  that  day,  I  should 
get  up  and  correct  the  omission  ere  I  went  to  sleep, 
lest  something  untoward  should  happen  in  the  night. 

He  said  that  no  careful  man  ever  made  mistakes. 

I  insisted  that  all  human  men  did,  at  one  time  or 
another,  and  frequently  at  both. 
287 


OLD   TIME   AND   .YOUNG   TOM 

Then  a  smooth-shaven  man  with  a  straight  slit 
across  his  face  right  under  his  nose  which  I  observed 
he  used  for  a  mouth,  reinforced  the  conductor,  and 
said  that  a  man  like  that,  meaning  myself,  would 
better  have  been  born  animal,  as  brute  instinct  was 
better  than  such  fallible  intelligence. 

And  I  insisted  that  instinct  was  a  most  erroneous 
guide;  that  when  it  came  in  contact  with  civilization 
and  human  conditions,  it  was  faulty,  incorrect,  stupid 
and  misleading.  We  quarreled  until  we  came  to  a 
station  where  we  waited  for  a  train,  and  the  man 
with  the  slit  under  his  nose  said :  "There  comes  a 
dog  down  the  street.  We'll  watch  him,  and  you 
won't  see  him  make  a  mistake  while  he  is  in  sight." 

We  all  agreed,  and  gathered  at  the  windows, 
while  the  intelligent  pointer  trotted  along  into  the 
field  of  observation,  never  dreaming  that  he  was 
taking  part  in  a  symposium  on  mental  science,  un- 
conscious influence,  the  infallibility  of  instinct  and 
the  weakness  of  intelligence.  He  saw  or  smelled 
something  in  an  ash  heap,  ran  eagerly  over  to  inspect 
it,  sniffed  it  carefully,  and  turned  away,  disap- 
pointed. 

288 


TALKING   WITH   THE   MOUTH 

"Mistake  number  one,"  said  the  umpire;  which 
part  I  kindly  volunteered  to  play,  myself;  "he 
thought  it  was  a  mutton-chop,  and  it  was  only  an  old 
shoe." 

The  conductor  said  that  should  not  count;  he 
didn't  know  what  it  was,  and  was  only  investigating. 

I  said,  "Yes,  and  it  didn't  turn  out  to  be  what  his 
instinct  told  him  it  was.  Same  thing  had  happened 
to  the  conductor,  who  took  up  my  ticket,  supposing 
it  was  local."  Tally  one  for  humanity. 

Then  the  dog,  starting  to  cross  the  street,  saw  a 
country  dog  trotting  along  under  a.  wagon.  The 
pointer  raised  a  town-bred  growl,  sailed  under  the 
wagon  after  the  collie,  and  came  out  between  the 
wheels  in  about  two  seconds,  preceded  by  a  howl 
that  you  could  hang  your  hat  on,  the  worst-whipped 
dog  in  the  shortest  space  of  time  anybody  ever  saw. 

"Mistake  number  two,"  said  the  umpire ;  "tackled 
the  wrong  dog." 

We  watched  him  with  increasing  interest  now,  as 

he  got  out  of  this  trouble,  and  ambled  uncertainly 

down  the  street,  muttering  to  himself  about  his 

wrongs,  and  administering  such  consolatory  balm 

289 


OLD  TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

to  his  wounded  feelings  and  punctured  hide  as  his 
healing  tongue  could  supply.  Two  men  were  stand- 
ing on  the  sidewalk,  talking  politics,  and  one  of  them 
had  his  right  hand  extended  in  statesmanlike  ges- 
ticulation, palm  upward.  Glad  for  anything  that 
ever  so  remotely  resembled  human  sympathy  and 
friendly  overture,  the  dog  trotted  up,  and,  thrust- 
ing his  cold  nose  and  dripping  tongue  into  the  out- 
stretched hand,  scared  the  orator  into  a  frenzied 
yell,  and  received  a  whack  over  the  head  from  his 
cane  that  made  the  poor  dog  howl  afresh  over  this 
accumulation  of  hostility  and  woe. 

"Mistake  number  three,"  tallied  the  umpire; 
"meddled  in  politics." 

"But,"  the  conductor  said,  "that  was  just  a  piece 
of  brutality  on  the  part  of  the  man;  the  dog's  over- 
tures were  friendly  enough." 

But  the  passenger  who  wore  diamonds  in  a  blue 
shirt  with  green  cuffs  and  a  pink  collar,  said,  "The 
dog  had  no  business  to  butt  into  a  discussion  that 
he  wasn't  interested  in,  without  an  invitation.  No 
man  would  do  such  a  thing  unless  he  expected  to 
get  a  jolt  in  the  neck  and  could  stand  the  gaff." 
290 


TALKING  WITH   THE   MOUTH 

Tally  four  for  human  intelligence.  The  dog 
looked  very  much  depressed  after  this  rejection  of 
his  appeal  for  sympathy.  Apparently  it  rankled  un- 
der his  liver-colored  spots,  and  he  made  up  his  ca- 
nine instinct  to  avenge  himself  upon  some  small  and 
safe  member  of  the  inhuman  human  race.  Seeing  a 
boy  of  twelve  or  fourteen  years  in  the  street,  he 
made  a  dash  at  him,  barking  furiously,  and  concen- 
trating all  his  wrath  against  this  feeble  representa- 
tive of  mankind.  The  boy  looked  at  his  assailant 
for  one  brief  breath  in  utter  amazement.  Then  he 
stooped  down,  picked  up  the  stone  that  is  always 
found  in  deadly  proximity  to  any  real  boy,  and  firing 
it  with  a  twist  that  only  a  boy  can  impart  to  a  mis- 
sile, fetched  the  dog  a  resounding  welt  with  it  that 
knocked  the  breath  out  of  him  so  far  that  he  couldn't 
get  it  back  to  yell  with  for  two  minutes.  Twice  the 
dog  lay  down  in  the  dust  and  tried  to  die,  and  when 
he  couldn't  do  it,  by  reason  of  having  no  breath  with 
which  to  expire,  he  sat  up  and  made  speechless  faces 
at  the  cold  unpitying  skies. 

"Mistake  numer  five,"  the  umpire  said.  But  a 
woman  who  was  tearfully  sympathizing  with  the 
291 


OLD  TIME   AND   YOUNG  TOM 

'dog  against  all  mankind,  filed  a  protest.  She  said, 
"The  dog  was  goaded  into  his  rash  act  by  cruelty 
and  persecution;  he  had  been  stung  to  madness  by 
his  wrongs;  he  had — " 

"Stung,  nothing!"  the  man  with  the  diamonds  and 
the  multi-colored  shirt  exclaimed;  "why,  a  pup  six 
weeks  old  ought  to  know  better  than  to  bark  at  a 
boy  with  his  hands  untied  and  a  stone  in  the  same 
street.  Would  you,  with  your  mere  human  intelli- 
gence, madam,  sass  a  strange  boy  in  the  street?" 

And  the  gentle  champion  of  the  dog  was  silent. 

The  next  opportunity  the  dog  saw  for  getting  into 
trouble  was  a  brindle  cow,  with  one  horn,  and  that 
crumpled,  stealing  corn  out  of  a  farmer's  wagon. 
He  made  a  swift  charge  to  chase  her  away;  she 
held  an  ear  of  corn  in  her  mouth  at  a  most  non- 
chalantly insolent  angle,  much  as  a  "bad  man"  car- 
ries his  cigar,  described  an  invisible  V  in  the  air, 
with  her  head,  and  tossed  the  dog  upon  the  nearest 
awning,  whence  he  rolled  to  the  ground  calling  gods 
and  men  to  witness  that  he  wished  he  hadn't. 

"Tally  for  the  dog,"  said  the  man  with  the  slit; 
292 


TALKING  WITH   THE   MOUTH 

"he  tried  to  do  a  good  deed  and  protect  an  honest 
man's  property  from  a  marauding  thief,  and  suf- 
fered martyrdom  in  the  discharge  of  a  noble  duty." 

"Yes,"  said  the  umpire,  "but  his  mistake  was  in 
approaching  the  cow  at  the  wrong  end.  He  should 
never  fool  around  that  end  of  a  cow,  or  the  other 
end  of  a  mule.  Zeal  commended;  methods  con- 
demned." 

And  then,  as  they  watched  to  see  what  would  hap- 
pen next,  the  town  marshal  came  along.  The  officer 
whistled  and  the  dog  came  limping  up  to  be  com- 
forted and  praised.  The  dog  wore  no  collar.  He 
was  an  unlicensed  reformer.  He  had  no  tag.  The 
marshal  roped  him  by  the  neck  and  hauled  him  off 
to  the  pound. 

"Climax  of  mistakes,"  the  umpire  decided ;  "lost 
his  credentials  and  had  no  place  in  the  convention 
at  all." 

"Had  no  business  on  the  street,"  said  the  man 
with  the  sporty  shirt ;  "it  wasn't  his  day.  Five  dol- 
lars or  the  sausage  machine." 

And  it  was  agreed  that  every  day  in  the  year  a 
293 


OLD  TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

man  should  be  thankful  that  he  belonged  to  the  hu- 
man race,  and  that  if  he  made  many  mistakes  with 
his  heedless  and  over-busy  tongue,  he  had  still  his 
nimble  and  rapid-fire  mouth  with  which  to  explain, 
and  apologize  for,  and  repent  those  mistakes. 


THE  SIX-FINGERED  MAN 

EVERY  careless  traveler  has  observed  the  easy 
and  graceful  facility  with  which  certain  people 
can  accomplish  the  apparently  delicate  ceremony  of 
introducing  two  entire  strangers,  the  master  of  cere- 
monies being  a  yet  greater  stranger  to  each  of  the 
twain. 

I  was  once  upon  a  time  making  a  journey  across 
a  small  portion  of  this  planet,  sitting  alone  by  the 
car  window  and  hoping  that  nobody  had  taken  the 
upper  flat  in  my  compartment,  when  a  man  whose 
freshness  chilled  me  seated  himself  opposite  me, 
threw  his  feet  airily  upon  the  seat  beside  me,  saying 
in  a  loud  tone  and  with  extravagant  hospitality, 
"Make  yourself  at  home!"  He  explained  to  me, 
as  I  received  his  advances  with  somewhat  cold  re- 
spect, that  a  young  lady  of  forty-eight  summers 
was  occupying  the  lower  floor  of  his  section,  and 
had  appropriated  his  seat  for  her  baggage-room, 
295 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG  TOM 

while  at  the  same  time  she  had  transformed  the  en- 
tire premises  into  a  cold  storage  apartment. 

The  man  said  that  he  had  sat  amidst  her  luggage 
until  the  cold  chills  began  to  run  up  and  down  his 
back,  and  he  had  no  doubt  he  was  even  now  on  the 
direct  road  to  an  attack  of  pneumonia.  He  then  went 
on  to  inform  me,  in  that  easy,  confidential,  autobiog- 
raphical turn,  that  he  lived  in  Kolusa,  Tipton 
County,  when  he  was  home;  he  had  been  married 
twice,  and  had  five  children — all  born  to  him  by  his 
first  wife.  "Three  boys,"  he  said,  and  remained 
for  a  moment  or  two  in  silence,  when  he  suddenly 
looked  up  and  added,  "and  two  girls."  You  can  not 
imagine  what  a  load  was  lifted  off  my  mind  when 
I  learned  what  those  remaining  children  were.  You 
see  he  hadn't  told  me,  and  I  felt  a  little  delicate 
about  asking. 

The  man  noted  the  look  of  interest  in  my  face  and 
went  on  with  his  narrative.  His  first  wife  was  a 
woman  of  very  despondent  temperament,  as  good 
a  woman,  he  said,  as  ever  lived,  but  always  afraid 
something  was  going  to  happen;  always  worried 
about  the  children  or  something.  She  was  a  good 
296 


THE   SIX-FINGERED   MAN 

motHer  to  the  children,  too ;  but  then  she  was  never 
well — always  sick  with  some  kind  of  complaint ;  get 
out  of  bed  to-day,  well  over  an  attack  of  one  thing, 
and  go  back  to  bed  to-morrow  with  something  else. 
This,  the  man  said,  made  it  almighty  hard  for  him. 

He  sighed  so  deeply  at  the  remembrance  of  the 
hard  lines  through  which  he  had  passed  that  I  sym- 
pathized with  him,  in  pitiful  praise  of  murmured 
condolence,  and  asked  him  if  this  continuous  illness 
seemed  to  affect  his  wife  any? 

Oh,  no,  he  said;  not  so  much  as  it  did  him;  she 
appeared  to  get  sort  of  used  to  it  like;  but  it  was 
different  with  him.  He  had  to  nurse  her  a  great 
deal  of  the  time,  and  that  kept  him  up  nights  and 
kept  him  about  the  house  a  good  deal  during  the 
day,  and  came  mighty  nigh  breaking  him  down. 
People  used  to  wonder  how  he  stood  it.  His  wife 
didn't  seem  to  realize  how  hard  it  was  on  him,  and 
when  he'd  speak  of  hiring  a  nurse  she  would  say 
they  couldn't  afford  it,  and  she'd  rather  have  him, 
anyhow.  I  said  his  was  indeed  a  sorrowful  case; 
that  some  women  were  very  obtuse  about  these 
things;  they  didn't  stop  to  think,  and  even  when 
297 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG  TOM 

they  were  dying  didn't  appear  to  care  how  much 
trouble  they  made  a  man. 

Oh,  well,  he  said,  he  didn't  believe  his  wife  was 
heartless,  or  if  you  came  to  that,  really  thoughtless 
about  it;  she  just  didn't  seem  to  realize,  being  a 
woman,  how  hard  these  things  are  on  a  man.  She 
didn't  try  to  make  it  any  harder  for  him  than  what 
she  could  help,  but  she  didn't  realize  how  a  sick  wife 
about  the  house  broke  into  a  man's  time  and  kept 
him  away  from  his  business,  nor  how  much  of  the 
care  of  the  house  she  threw  on  him.  His  first  wife 
was  a  good  woman  and  had  been  a  good  mother  to 
his  five  children,  but  she  never  seemed  to  know  what 
a  care  she  was  to  him.  I  felt  the  tears  coming  into 
my  eyes  as  I  told  him  how  it  warmed  my  heart  to 
meet  a  stranger  and  find  him  so  magnanimous  and 
unselfish;  his  defense  of  his  dead  wife  was  some- 
thing beautiful.  The  man  thanked  me  and  said  he 
liked  to  do  the  square  thing  by  everybody. 

I  looked  around  for  that  pleasantly  suggestive 

case  of  surgical  instruments,  heroic  size,  which  they 

carry  on  the  cars,  labeled  "ax,  saw,  hammer."     I 

could  not  see  it  and  I  suppose  they  are  not  furnished 

298 


THE   SIX-FINGERED   MAN 

the  sleeping-cars,  on  account  of  the  temptation  that 
would  present  itself  to  the  porter  to  use  them  when 
he  wanted  to  get  the  passengers  out  of  bed  about  one 
hundred  and  twenty-five  miles  before  reaching  their 
respective  stations. 

But  just  here  another  stranger  entered  the  section, 
rather  timidly  explaining  that  he  had  a  mortgage 
on  the  sky  parlor,  which  he  would  like  to  foreclose 
as  soon  as  the  porter  got  that  far  down  the  docket. 
The  man  with  the  inconsiderate  wife  who  was  sick 
all  the  time  took  my  valise  off  the  seat  beside  me 
and  welcomed  the  stranger  with  a  hospitable  alac- 
rity. "Sit  right  down  there,"  he  said.  "You  won't 
crowd  anybody.  Let's  see ;  I  don't  know  as  I  ever 
saw  you  before.  What  is  your  name?" 

The  stranger  said  his  name  was  Simpson;  Abel 
Simpson,  and  he  was  from  Wyalusing. 

"Oh,  yes,"  exclaimed  the  martyr.  "I'm  glad  to 
know  you,  Mr.  Simpson.  Let  me  make  you  ac- 
quainted with — I  don't  know  your  name?"  he  added, 
with  an  interrogation  torpedo  leveled  in  my  direc- 
tion. I  supplied  the  desired  autobiographical  data 
and  he  completed  the  introduction :  "I  want  you  to 
299 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG  TOM 

know  my  friend,  Mr.  Simpson;"  then  he  wanted 
Mr.  Simpson  to  know  his  friend,  Mr.  Me,  and  then 
concluded  the  touching  picture  of  newly  cemented 
friendships  by  introducing  us  -both  to  our  mutual 
friend.  "My  name  is  Benton,"  he  said,  "Jefferson 
Benton;  just  call  me  Jeff;  everybody  calls  me 
Jeff—" 

And  then  he  took  up  his  parable  once  more  and 
rattled  away,  but  I  don't  remember  much,  if  indeed 
I  heard  much  of  anything  my  new-found  old  friends 
said  after  that.  I  heard  Mr.  Simpson  promise  to 
call  him  Jeff,  exacting  from  him,  in  reciprocity 
therefor,  a  pledge  to  address  him  evermore  as  Abe ; 
then,  as  the  third  member  of  this  trio  of  dear  old 
friends  who  had  never  seen  or  heard  of  one  another 
in  their  lives,  I  signed  the  agreement  to  say  Jeff  and 
Abe,  and  in  response  to  their  appeal  for  my  own 
nickname,  I  basely  dissembled,  and  told  Damon 
and  Pythias  that  there  was  no  good  nickname  for 
my  Christian  name,  and  Dionysius  was  too  long  to 
be  used  on  anything  but  a  hook  and  ladder  truck, 
but  they  might  call  me  "Birdie." 

But  I  was  interested  only  in  my  old  friend,  Abe 
300 


THE   SIX-FINGERED   MAN 

Simpson.  Not  in  what  he  said,  but  in  what  he  was  ; 
for  who  he  might  be  I  didn't  care  a  copper.  When 
I  grasped  the  hand  of  this  stanch  old  friend  of 
mine  I  was  astonished  to  observe  that  I  had  a  whole 
handful  of  fingers  swept  within  my  grasp.  I  could 
not  help  glancing  at  the  honest  hand  of  my  good 
old  friend  after  I  had  relinquished  it,  and  lo,  all  my 
half-wakened  suspicions  were  realized.  Here  was  a 
man  among  ten  thousand.  Among  all  the  friends 
whom  my  soul  has  grappled  to  itself  with  hooks  of 
steel  by  the  charm  of  a  three-minute  railway  intro- 
duction, Abe  Simpson  stands  out  in  vivid  relief 
against  the  commonplace  background  of  a  legion 
of  friends  with  normal  anatomies.  He  is  the  only 
friend  I  have  in  all  this  world  who  has  six  fingers 
on  each  hand.  When  Abe  Simpson  shakes  hands 
with  you  he  does  it  in  no  half-hearted,  short- fingered 
way. 

Now,  there  is  a  man  worth  knowing.  A  man, 
every  inch  of  him.  I  looked  at  him  with  ever- 
increasing  interest.  Here,  I  thought,  is  a  man  with 
a  pedigree.  Biddle  and  Astor  and  Winthrop, 
Quaker  and  Knickerbocker  and  Puritan  may  come 
301 


OLD  TIME   AND   YOUNG  TOM 

to  this  friend  of  mine  with  their  hats  under  their 
arms  and  ask  after  his  health.  For  I  looked  into  a 
book  older  and  truer,  and  about  better  people,  than 
Burke's  Peerage,  and  hunted  up  Abe's  family.  I 
found  that  he  had  an  ancestry  older  than  "the  boy 
preacher."  His  "gre't-gre't-gre't-grandfather"  was  a 
Gittite,  a  Philistine  of  the  Philistines,  and  a  Goliath 
by  birth.  For  in  the  Book — II  Samuel,  XXI,  20,  I 
read :  "And  there  was  yet  a  battle  in  Gath,  where 
was  a  man  of  great  stature,  that  had  on  every  hand 
six  fingers  and  on  every  foot  six  toes,  four  and 
twenty  in  number;  and  He  also  was  born  to  the 
giant." 

Now,  the  giant  was  the  redoubtable  Goliath.  Abe 
Simpson  was  a  good  man  to  his  fingers'  ends,  I 
judged  from  his  conversation.  He  had  none  of  the 
mean  small  race-prejudice  against  the  Chosen  Peo- 
ple, which  is  the  mark  of  little  souls,  although  he 
had  sore  cause  to  feel  bitterly  toward  them,  because 
David  killed  the  great  Goliath,  and  Jonathan,  a 
nephew  of  David,  slew  this  terrible  Philistine  with 
the  multitudinous  fingers  and  toes.  But  although 
several  times  I  intentionally  and  with  marked  pur- 
302 


THE   SIX-FINGERED   MAN 

pose  turned  the  conversation  Old  Testamentward, 
and  spoke  of  the  past  glory  of  Israel  in  the  field  of 
military  achievement,  Abe  Simpson  never  once  dis- 
played the  slightest  bitterness;  no  long-slumbering 
dream  of  revenge  was  awakened  in  his  breast  as  we 
calmly  discussed  the  deeds  of  the  puissant  David. 

His  forgiving  spirit  was  charming  in  its  mod- 
esty, too.  He  did  not  flourish  his  pardon  of  his 
family's  enemies  and  conquerors  in  a  printed  proc- 
lamation, as  a  king  or  a  president  would  do ;  he  just 
said  nothing  about  it.  That  was  noble  in  him.  I 
fear  me  if  some  man  slew  my  grandfather,  from 
whom  I  had  inherited  more  digits  than  the  famous 
old  lady  who  wore  "rings  on  her  fingers  and  bells 
on  her  toes,"  the  extra  fingers  would  cause  me  to 
remember  my  slaughtered  grandsire  every  time  I 
astonished  some  gentle  manicure. 

I  fell  to  wondering  greatly  if  the  more  there  was 
of  a  man  the  more  of  a  man  he  was,  if  that  was  one 
reason  why  great  big  men  as  a  rule  are  good-natured 
and  big-hearted.  It  is  the  little  fellows  usually  who 
are  quick-tempered  as  terriers  and  lively  as  wasps — 
frequently  in  the  same  liveliness.  If  the  extra  finger 
303 


OLD   TIME  'AND   YOUNG   TOM 

does  any  good  in  softening  the  temper  and  mellow- 
ing the  disposition  I  know  some  men  who  should  be 
grafted  with  fingers  all  the  way  up  their  arms. 

Abe  Simpson  didn't  appear  to  mind  the  extra  fin- 
gers, nor  yet  to  be  proud  of  them.  I  couldn't  see 
that  they  were  of  the  least  use  to  him.  I  noticed 
that  when  he  thrust  his  hand  into  his  pocket  the 
extra  finger  stuck  out,  and,  with  the  thumb  sticking 
out  at  right  angles  on  the  opposite  side,  gave  his 
hand  the  appearance  of  having  a  hilt  to  it.  When 
he  hung  up  his  overcoat  I  saw  the  wrists  of  a  pair 
of  dogskin  gloves  projecting  from  a  pocket. 

Straightway  I  fell  to  wondering  if  he  had  his 
gloves  made  to  order,  or  if  there  were  six-fingered 
people  in  the  world  in  numbers  sufficient  to  justify 
the  glovers  in  manufacturing  for  the  trade  choice 
and  assorted  lines  of  six-fingered  gloves.  Which 
one  did  he  call  his  "little  finger?"  I  wondered.  If 
he  were  a  baseball  pitcher  would  that  auxiliary  finger 
enable  him  to  invent  some  new  inexplicable,  cork- 
screw curve  that  would  baffle  the  keenest  gaze  of 
any  but  a  three-eyed  batter?  What  a  "phenomenon" 
he  would  be !  Why,  I  thought,  oh,  why  was  not  my 
304 


THE   SIX-FINGERED   MAN 

friend,  Abe  Simpson,  born  a  Paderewski?  How 
much  better  would  it  be  for  a  brilliant  and  gifted 
pianist  to  have  more  fingers  and  less  hair!  The 
chords  he  could  reach  and  combine,  the  runs  he 
could  make,  the  bird-like  trills  and  the  complicated 
and  intricate  passages  he  could  execute  to  the  de- 
spair of  the  five-fingered  artists!  And  then  see  what 
an  impulse  would  be  given  musical  thought;  there 
would  be  published  a  new  work  on  "six-finger  exer- 
cises" and  we  should  have  "duets  for  four  hands 
and  twenty-four  fingers." 

How  many  things  a  man  might  do  if  he  but  had 
six  fingers !  He  could  always  have  a  "finger  in  the 
pie"  even  when  there  was  an  additional  pie — one 
more  than  the  average  man  could  compass. 

And  yet  it  occurred  to  me,  as  I  sat  watching  my 
old  friend,  Abe  Simpson  (and  wishing  that  I  had 
been  his  lifelong  friend  for  a  quarter  of  an  hour  in- 
stead of  a  scant  five  minutes,  that  I  might  feel  suf- 
ficiently intimate  with  him  to  ask  him  a  few  of  the 
confidential  conundrums  with  which  I  was  catechiz- 
ing my  own  ignorance),  that  the  possession  of  six 
fingers  would  bring  with  it  some  disadvantages. 
305 


OLD   TIME   AND    YOUNG   TOM 

Think  of  having  your  ears  boxed,  if  you  were  a 
child,  by  a  teacher  with  an  extra  finger  with  an  ad- 
ditional tingle  in  it.  Think  of  fighting  a  boy  who 
could  clutch  two  fingerfuls  more  of  your  hair  than 
you  could  grip  of  his.  And  if  your  fingers,  as  the 
fingers  of  some  people  are,  were  all  thumbs,  what 
a  burden  would  be  the  superfluous  thumb ! 

And  then  there  appears  to  be  a  singular  fatality 
hanging  over  the  uneasy  hand  that  wears  three  pairs 
of  fingers.  I  can  think  just  now  of  but  two  eminent 
six-fingered  people  in  history;  one  was  the  son  of 
Goliath,  and  the  other  was  a  woman,  beautiful,  ac- 
complished, admired — a  queen  of  England,  Anne 
Boleyn.  The  giant  was  slain  in  the  prime  of  his  life 
and  Anne  Boleyn  was  beheaded  in  the  bloom  of  her 
beauty  and  womanhood.  How  much  better  had  it 
been  for  these  two  distinguished  children  of  history 
had  they  had  each  an  extra  head,  rather  than  a  su- 
pernumerary finger! 

I  don't  suppose  I  shall  ever  meet  my  friend,  Abe 

Simpson,  again,  when  I  might  have  courage  to  ask 

him  to  solve  all  these  problems  for  me.    Jeff  Benton 

I  will  meet,  scores  and  thousands  of  times.     Isn't 

306 


THE    SIX-FINGERED   MAN 

that  always  the  way?  The  man  for  whose  deeds 
and  thoughts  and  opinions  you  don't  care  a  copper, 
whose  reminiscences  are  commonplace  to  dreariness, 
meets  you  at  every  turn  and  crossing  in  life.  But 
the  man  who  is  interesting  to  his  six  fingers'  ends  is 
either  taciturn  as  a  sphinx,  or  else  talks  about  any- 
thing in  the  world  rather  than  himself.  Oft  as  I 
get  aboard  a  railway  train  or  steamboat  I  shall  meet 
my  friend,  Jeff  Benton,  with  his  tireless  mouth  and 
slumbering  brain,  but  I  have  shaken  hands  with  my 
dear  old  friend,  Abe  Simpson,  in  all  human  prob- 
ability, for  the  last  time. 

"He  was  a  man,  take  him  for  all  in  all, 
And  a  couple  of  ringers  over,  good  Horatio, 
I  shall  not  look  upon  his  like  again." 


THE  AVERAGE  MAN 

ONCE  upon  a  time,  the  Reverend  Thomas  K. 
Beecher,  of  Elmira,  brother  to  Henry  Ward 
Beecher,  got  into  some  kind  of  quarrel  with  a  man 
named  Smith,  down  at  Cohoes.  Thomas  K. 
Beecher  wrote  the  presumptuous  man  a  defiant  little 
note,  saying  curtly,  "Do  you  want  to  get  into  a 
quarrel  with  the  Beecher  family?"  And  the  man 
wrote  back  with  a  snarl,  "Do  you  want  a  fight  with 
the  Smith  family?"  And  no  Beecher  could  stand 
that;  Thomas  K.  laughed  and  hastened  to  make 
terms.  Not  long  ago  I  heard  an  impassioned  orator 
say,  "What  would  the  world  do  without  its  Napo- 
leons, its  Edisons,  its  Homers?"  Well,  I  reckon 
we'd  have  to  worry  along  with  our  Wellingtons,  our 
Bells,  and  our  Kiplings.  But  a  question  far  more 
momentous  is,  "What  would  become  of  the  world 
without  its  Smiths,  its  Joneses,  and  its  Robinsons?" 
Ah,  my  boy,  they  are  the  people.  Walt  Whitman 
sings  somewhere : 

308 


THE   AVERAGE   MAN 

"Vivas  to  those  who  have  f ail'd ! 
And  to  those  whose  war-vessels  sank  in  the  sea ! 
And  to  those  who  themselves  sank  in  the  sea ! 
And  to  all  generals  that  lost  engagements,  and  to  all 

overcome  heroes! 
And  to  the  numberless  unknown  heroes  equal  to  the 

greatest  heroes  known!" 

Right  nobly  thought  and  right  grandly  sung, 
prophet  of  the  plain  people,  minstrel  of  the  common 
clay!  Somebody  must  sing  for  the  defeated  and 
the  obscure.  While  the  great  prophets  chant  the 
glories  of  the  glorious  and  the  wonders  of  the 
wonderful,  some  minor  prophet  must  trill  his 
little  pipe  with  what  feeble  breath  his  gasping 
lungs  can  supply,  for  the  commonplace  people 
and  the  commonplace  things  of  life,  which  are, 
after  all,  no  commoner  than  air  and  water. 

One  Yellowstone  Park  is  enough  for  the  whole 
wide  world.  But  we  must  have  millions  of  springs 
to  one  red-hot  geyser.  One  grove  of  giant  Sequoias 
the  world  must  have,  but  we  must  have  millions  of 
acres  of  good  shade  and  fruit  trees.  And  grass! 
Man  alive,  how  much  grass  the  world  requires. 
309 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG  TOM 

Principally  to  "keep  off".  What  should  we  do  when 
we  went  to  town,  if  we  didn't  have  to  keep  off  the 
grass  ?  The  world  could  exist  without  Niagara  Falls 
and  the  Alps,  and  the  Rockies,  but  we  must  have  a 
fair  supply  of  good  drinking-water  and  fertile  farm- 
ing land.  And  the  farm  need  not  be  any  more  pic- 
turesque than  a  suburban  truck  patch.  That's  one 
reason  why  I  choose  to  preach  on  "averages"  this 
morning.  Another  reason  is,  that  it  is  the  easiest 
thing  on  earth  to  talk  about.  It  isn't  artistic,  at  all. 
It  isn't  portraiture;  it  isn't  cartoon  work;  it  isn't 
scene-painting.  It  is  just  a  job  of  calcimining  with 
a  flat  brush  on  a  plain  wall.  Anybody  can  do  that. 
And  then,  it's  the  only  thing  I  can  do.  I  might  have 
mentioned  that  first,  and  saved  time,  but  that 
wouldn't  have  been  mediocre. 

You  know,  it  is  always  so  restful  to  meet  up  with 
the  average  man,  after  fate  has  cast  you  for  ever  so 
short  a  time  in  the  society  of  giants.  So  many  times 
do  we  hear  the  people  who  believe  in  "the  good  old 
days"  quote  to  us,  "There  were  giants  in  the  earth 
in  those  days."  So  there  were.  So  there  were.  And 
I  always  want  to  go  on  and  read^the  rest  of  that 
310 


THE   AVERAGE   MAN 

chapter  in  Genesis — just  a  couple  of  verses  farther 
on — "and  it  repented  the  Lord  that  he  had  made 
man  on  the  earth." 

But  of  course  the  wisdom  and  patience  that  bears 
even  with  "giants"  went  on  and  corrected  the  fault 
of  "giantism"  by  multiplying  the  average  people, 
who,  as  they  run  the  earth  more  and  more,  are 
daily  getting  it  into  better  shape.  The  average 
man  doesn't  talk  in  blank  verse  and  epigrams,  which 
are  very  well  in  books,  but  which  rather  overcome 
one  in  conversation,  especially  when  the  subject  is 
hams  or  the  price  of  cotton.  That's  why  a  book 
that  is  full  of  "smart"  characters  wearies  you.  And 
the  war  correspondent !  What  lurid  reading  he  has 
been  furnishing  us.  Last  week  you  read  in  the  des- 
patches from  Aaaardvaaaark  Kppfpe,  the  startling 
information  that  "one  of  the  shells  set  fire  to  an 
ammunition  wagon  which  burned  all  day."  I 
bought  four  different  papers  to  see  if  I  couldn't 
get  some  reassuring  variation  on  that,  but  no,  Dem- 
ocrat, Republican,  Prohibitionist  and  Pop,  they  each 
and  all  stuck  to  it  that  "the  ammunition  wagon 
burned  all  day." 


OLD    TIME   AND    YOUNG   TOM 

I  had  to  accept  it,  and  now,  I  ask  forgiveness  of 
an  old  soldier  for  having  doubted  his  calm  statement 
that  he  dropped  the  contents  of  his  pipe  on  some 
loose  powder  in  a  magazine  one  day,  but  realizing 
that  it  was  life  or  death,  he  went  to  work  and 
"stamped  it  out  with  his  feet,  so  that  not  more  than 
a  bushel  and  a  half  of  the  powder  was  burned."  I 
confess  with  shame  that  I  set  that  down,  when  I 
first  heard  it,  as  a  lie.  Now,  since  the  correspondent 
demands  that  I  accept  the  slow-combustion  ammu- 
nition wagon,  I  indorse  the  smoldering  powder 
magazine.  And  the  next  hesitating  sinner  who 
comes  to  me  with  serious  doubts  on  the  subject  of 
Jonah  and  the  whale  will  get  an  up-to-date  newspa- 
per pulled  on  him. 

But  what  I  was  going  to  say  was  this,  that  the 
very  things  some  men  tell  you  are  utterly  impossible 
are  the  things  that  the  average  man  is  fond  of  doing. 
Admiral  Dewey  isn't  an  average  man,  by  any  means, 
but  he  never  would  have  been  Admiral  Dewey  if  he 
hadn't  had  with  him,  on  divers  occasions,  a  few 
hundred  average  men  on  whom  he  could  rely.  Hand 
to  hand,  with  no  average  man  to  help  him,  Napo- 
312 


THE   AVERAGE   MAN 

leon  Bonaparte  would  have  been  unable  to  stand 
before  James  Jeffries,  Esquire,  for  one  round.  Face 
to  face,  in  the  open,  Wellington  would  have  fallen 
before  the  quick  and  deadly  aim  of  Buffalo  Bill  be- 
fore the  Iron  Duke  coud  have  reached  around  for 
his  gun. 

These  were  great  men,  Wellington  and  Napoleon, 
but  it  took  several  hundred  thousand  average  men 
to  make  them  render  their  greatness  available.  "We 
don't  have  the  giants  there  were  on  earth  in  the  old 
days,"  says  Backnumber.  Well,  yes,  we  do,  but  they 
are  not  playing  star  parts  any  more.  There  was  a 
time  when  a  few  men  owned  the  earth,  when  a  king 
merely  made  a  gesture — lifted  a  finger,  when  he 
wanted  a  thing  done,  when  he  stamped  his  foot  and 
a  million  men  sprang  from  the  ground  to  do  his  bid- 
ding. Now  his  majesty  deals  with  the  average  man. 
He  submits  his  wishes  to  Parliament,  or  something 
like  it  with  another  name,  composed  of  the  averagest 
kind  of  average  men — everybody  knows  that.  They 
take  the  wish  of  his  majesty  into  what  they  call  re- 
spectful consideration.  They  refer  it  to  a  commit- 
tee, which  may  report  it  back  for  further  discussion 
313 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG  TOM 

or  may  bury  it  in  a  pigeon-hole,  and  finally  it  may  be 
utterly  rejected  for  merely  average  reasons. 

'Tisn't  so  very  long  ago  that  a  farm-hand  began 
work  before  it  was  light  enough  to  see  the  dark,  and 
worked  until  he  had  been  asleep  for  an  hour.  That 
was  when  the  man  who  owned  the  farm  was  a  great 
man.  The  hours  of  the  laboring  man  used  to  be 
twelve,  and  then  they  dropped  to  ten,  and  now  eight 
is  good  enough  and  long  enough  for  them  since  the 
average  man  began  to  count  himself  when  they  all 
stood  up.  Oh,  son,  what  we  need  is  not  more  giants, 
but  just  a  little  better  average  for  the  average  man, 
and  then  lots  more  of  him.  The  smallest  thing  in 
the  military  history  of  Prussia  is — or  forever  was — 
the  Potsdam  Grenadier  Guards,  organized  by 
Friedrich  Wilhelm  of  Prussia.  The  king's  heart 
and  thought  were  his  army,  though  he  never  had  but 
one  war,  and  that  a  most  insignificant  one.  And 
this  was  his  pet  regiment.  "Twenty-four  hundred 
sons  of  Anak;"  the  shortest  man  nearly  seven  feet 
tall;  the  tallest  nearly  nine!  Three  battalions  of 
giants;  they  were  hired,  kidnapped,  stolen,  bought, 
got  in  any  way.  One  recruit,  James  Kirkman,  an 


THE   AVERAGE   MAN 

Irishman,  cost  twelve  hundred  pounds  before  he  was 
safely  enlisted. 

i  And  the  first  thing  Frederick  the  Great  did  when 
he  became  king,  the  Frederick  who  was  a  soldier, 
was  promptly  to  disband  this  regiment  of  giants,  to 
transfer  a  few  of  the  men  "not  of  inhuman  height" 
into  other  regiments,  and  let  the  "giants"  drift  where 
they  would,  so  long  as  they  didn't  get  into  the  army. 
"Giants"  are  no  good,  my  son.  Even  to-day  a  man 
may  be  so  tall  and  big  they  won't  accept  him  as  a 
recruit  in  our  own  army.  A  little  fellow  may  get 
into  the  drum  corps,  but  there  is  no  place  for  a 
"giant,"  not  even  in  the  artillery. 

The  average  man  will  always  run  things,  my  son. 
He  will  always  be  in  the  majority.  Because  the  man 
out  of  the  average  doesn't  really  fit  in  anywhere. 
And  there  are  little  things  which  we  must  do  for 
ourselves  every  day,  that  no  one — not  even  the  truly 
great — can  do  for  us.  Once  upon  a  time  I  stood 
looking  at  a  friend  of  mine,  a  watchmaker,  putting 
a  watch  together.  I  think,  indeed,  it  was  my  watch. 

Because  it  was  my  own,  I  had  thought  I  could  do 
as  I  pleased  with  it — a  very  common  mistake  which 
315 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

the  average  man  is  prone  to  make,  this  thinking  that 
a  man  can  do  as  he  will  with  what  is  his  own.  I  had 
taken  it  apart  to  see  why  it  wouldn't  run,  after  I  had 
dropped  it  down  the  stairs.  And  when  I  tried  to  put 
it  together  again  I  had  more  wheels  and  springs  and 
little  screws  and  things  piled  upon  the  table  than  you 
could  have  packed  into  a  valise.  So  I  put  the  whole 
assortment  into  a  box  and  carried  it  to  my  friend, 
the  watchmaker.  He  adjusted  delicate  bits  of  ma- 
chinery that  I  could  scarcely  see;  tiny  screws  that  I 
couldn't  pick  up;  delicate  springs  I  was  afraid  to 
breathe  upon;  fairy  wheels  and  little  dreams  of 
jewels.  The  work  appeared  little  less  than  a  miracle 
to  me.  I  said : 

"I  see  you  have  some  artificial  eyes  in  the  win- 
dow; now,  if  a  man  preferred  a  real  eye,  one  with 
which  he  could  see,  rather  than  a  glass  one,  could 
you  make  him  one  ?" 

But  he  laughed  and  said  that  was  a  little  beyond 
his  skill.  But  I  said : 

"Well,  they  make  artificial  arms  and  legs  that  are 
yery  like  the  originals?" 

"Yes,"  he  said,  "that  you  can  fight  and  run  with." 
316 


THE   AVERAGE   MAN 

"That's  the  right  order,"  I  assented.  "And  teeth 
they  make,  of  course  ?" 

"That  you  can  smile  and  bite  with,"  he  said. 

Again  I  admired  the  beautiful  order  in  which  he 
aligned  the  functions  of  the  "human  warious,"  and 
added  that  that  they  also  make  false  noses. 

"That  may  be  blown,"  he  said,  "and  I  think  I 
have  known  a  man  who  snored  with  a  wax  nose." 

And  then,  his  work  being  finished,  he  picked  up 
my  hat,  placed  it  on  my  head,  and  we  made  ready  to 
go  out  and  yell  our  lungs  to  rags  over  a  baseball 
game.  But  he  didn't  adjust  my  hat  comfortably, 
and  I  told  him  to  try  again.  He  failed.  I  showed 
him  exactly  how  I  wore  it.  I  put  it  on  half  a  dozen 
times,  and  he  tried  it  half  a  dozen  times  after  me. 
And  at  last  he  gave  it  up.  I  gave  it,  just  as  you  do, 
the  merest  shadow  of  a  touch,  sometimes  only  a 
little  shake  of  the  head,  to  settle  it  into  precisely  the 
right  place.  It  looks  like  the  simplest  thing  on  earth, 
but  it  is  one  thing  that  no  man  can  do  for  another. 
No,  it  isn't  because  the  man  has  for  years  grown 
accustomed  to  doing  it  for  himself.  A  mother  can't 
make  her  tiny  little  boy  wear  his  hat  just  as  she  puts 
317 


OLD   TIME   AND    YOUNG   TOM 

it  on  his  head.  Heaven  be  praised.  I  have  seen 
babies  on  the  train — boy  babies — rebel  with  shrieks 
and  fierce  clutches,  at  the  mother's  adjustment  of  the 
baby's  head-dress. 

My  friend,  the  watchmaker,  is  a  mechanical  ge- 
nius. He  can  make  a  watch,  and  adjust  the  most 
delicate  machinery  the  human  eye  can  see,  and 
do  it  so  well  and  so  accurately  that  it  will  run  and 
keep  perfect  time  for  years,  yet  he  can't  put  my 
hat — a  common  soft  felt  thing  that  cost  about  a 
dollar — on  my  head — the  most  careless  and  forget- 
ful head  in  America — in  a  way  that  I  do,  or  will 
wear  it.  So  the  average  man  has  always  some  little 
trait  of  perfect  independence  about  him,  some  thing 
that  he  must  and  will  and  does  do  his  own  way. 
Doesn't  make  much  fuss  about  it ;  doesn't  make  any 
unless  the  great  man  insists  on  his  wearing  his  hat 
as  greatness  thinks  it  should  be  worn;  just  puts  it 
on  his  own  head  in  his  own  way  and  wears  it  that 
way. 

There  is  nothing  on  earth  quite  so  interesting  as 
average  people.  They  are  so  interesting  they  deserve 
to  be  rated  among  "things."  All  things  are  not 


THE   AVERAGE   MAN 

people,  but  a  great  many — that  is  to  say,  some  people 
are  things.  Now,  I  have  traveled  a  great  deal — I 
don't  like  to  say  how  much,  lest  I  might  discourage 
people  who  haven't  been  so  far.  But  I  have  been  to 
Monrovia  and  Santa  Monica,  and  am  contemplating 
a  trip  to  Escondido  and  Compton,  and  all  this  travel 
broadens  one's  views  and  enlarges  one's  sympathies, 
and  leads  one  to  form  a  better  estimate  of  one's 
judgment  of  one's  prejudices  about  one.  And  in  all 
the  countries  I  have  visited,  outside  of  cattle  and 
animals — and  I  have  never  visited  any  inside — I 
have  scarcely  found  a  living  person  except  people. 
People !  Why,  they're  as  common  as  grass.  Peoria 
county  used  to  fre  full  of  them  when  I  was  a  boy. 
I've  seen  hundreds  of  them.  I  suppose  that  is  one 
reason  why  I  stand  so  little  in  awe  of  them.  I  used 
to  be  afraid  of  them.  But  that  was  before  I  found 
out  how  many  of  them  there  are  in  the  world.  And 
all  so  much  alike. 

I  used  to  be  afraid  of  Great  Men  and  Distin- 
guished Women.    The  people,  you  know,  who  look 
wise,  and  talk  bass,  and  say  "Ah!"  with  a  circum- 
flex that  fairly  runs  up  and  down  your  spine.    You 
'319 


OLD   TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

know;  the  people  who  are  afraid  to  stand  very 
near  the  edge  of  the  world,  lest  they  should  tip  it  so 
far  over  it  would  shift  its  ballast,  "turn  turtle"  and 
slide  them  off  into  everlasting  space.  I  used  to  hold 
my  hat  in  my  hand  when  I  talked  with  these  people, 
and  say  "sir"  and  "ma'am".  But  after  I  began  my 
travels,  and  got  forty  miles  from  home,  I  discovered 
that  they  were  the  same  kind  of  people  that  inhab- 
ited the  earth.  The  first  member  of  congress  I  ever 
met  looked  exactly  like  a  man  who  used  to  keep  store 
in  Mossville.  And  when  I  walked  up  very  respect- 
fully to  shake  his  extended  finger,  it  was  the  same 
man.  I  used  to  admire  the  nice  exactness  with 
which  he  could  cut  cheese.  And  to  the  day  of  his 
death  there  was  never  anything  else  which  he  could 
do  quite  so  well. 

He  was  in  congress  eight  years,  and  never  knew 
what  committee  he  was  on.  He  never  opened  his 
head  but  once,  all  the  time  he  was  there.  That 
was  one  morning  when  he  arose  at  the  close  of 
the  chaplain's  prayer,  caught  the  speaker's  eye,  and 
moved  that  it  be  received  and  adopted.  He  saved 
up  all  his  franks  for  eight  years,  to  use  when  he 
320 


THE   AVERAGE   MAN 

got  to  be  old  and  helpless,  he  said.  "What  did  we 
keep  him  there  so  long  for?"  I  don't  know.  Same 
reason  the  rest  of  the  people  kept  their  congressmen, 
I  reckon. 

I  once  met  a  real  lord  in  my  travels.  He  looked 
the  living  image  of  Bud  Harmerson,  who  used  to 
come  to  Copperas  Creek  twice  a  year  and  hold  auc- 
tion sales  of  the  "old  masters".  I've  seen  him 
knock  down  a  genuine  Raphael — he  guaranteed  it 
himself,  gave  a  written  guarantee  over  Raphael's 
own  signature,  for  ten  years — for  two  dollars  and 
eighty  cents,  that  you  couldn't  buy  to-day  for  eight 
dollars.  The  lord  was  balder  than  Bud,  but  his 
nose  wasn't  so  red,  and  he  hadn't  such  a  good  voice. 
I  was  disappointed  bitterly,  at  first,  and  was  dis- 
posed to  resent  his  lordship,  until  I  had  traveled 
a  little  farther,  and  begun  to  see  that  neither  the 
auctioneer  nor  the  nobleman  could  help  being  peo- 
ple. It  is  a  hard  matter  to  get  out  of  the  human 
race,  after  you  have  once  been  born,  now  I  tell  you. 

In  his  church  the  average  man  is  always  the  work- 
ing member.  He  is  never  on  the  Reception  Com- 
mittee on  the  great  days  when  the  great  man  comes. 
321 


OLD   TIME   AND    YOUNG   TOM 

But  he  is  on  half  a  dozen  grubbing  committees  that 
work  all  the  time  for  the  reward  of  hearing  those 
who  sit  in  the  high  seats  of  the  synagogue  wonder 
"why  that  committee  doesn't  do  something."  After 
all  the  big  subscriptions  are  in,  he  is  sent  around 
with  a  cheap  note-book  to  rake  for  halves  and  quar- 
ters. Having  no  artistic  taste  or  any  fine  sense  of 
proportions,  he  is  of  no  earthly  use  the  day  before 
the  fair,  but  he  is  a  whole  team  to  sweep  up  and  lug 
out  the  debris  the  next  day.  His  wife  does  not  pre- 
side at  the  silk  bazaar.  She  boils  the  ham. 

At  the  picnic  he  swings  the  children  until  the  din- 
ner is  eaten.  He  hunts  up  the  lost  packages,  and  is 
sent  off  up-town  under  the  blazing  sun  in  mid-after- 
noon to  hold  the  train  until  it  is  a  little  later  and  the 
rest  of  them  can  stroll  up  in  the  cool  of  the  afternoon. 
He  also  goes  to  the  spring  for  a  couple  of  pails  of 
drinking  water.  Spring  isn't  over  a  mile  and  a  half 
away.  Sometimes,  when  he  returns,  they  say,  "Oh, 
thank  you!"  and  if  the  company  is  exceedingly 
grateful,  they  say,  "Oh,  thank  you  very  much!" 
accent  heavy  on  the  "very."  But  when  they  say  that 
322 


THE   AVERAGE   MAN 

they  always  send  him  away  for  ice.    That  "thank 
you"  does  for  both  water  and  ice. 

And  the  most  angelic  thing  there  is  about  the  aver- 
age man  is  that  after  he  has  rendered  his  fellow-man 
any  little  service  or  kindness  that  comes  to  his  always 
over-busied  hand,  he  doesn't  seem  to  care  very  much 
whether  they  are  grateful  for  it  or  not.  The  average 
man  actually  appears  to  find  a  great  deal  of  happiness 
in  being  serviceable.  He  is  usually  a  salaried  man. 
Never  expects  to  be  very  rich,  except  in  children, 
and  he's  the  very  kind  of  man  who  ought  to  have  a 
dozen,  and  who  deserves  a  pension  for  every  one, 
because  the  stock  never  runs  out  or  runs  down — 
always  improves,  and  the  state  and  society  is  a  con- 
stant debtor  to  the  average  man.  If  it  wasn't  for 
him,  the  world  would  soon  run  to  seed.  The  fam- 
ilies of  the  great  die  out;  or  worse,  they  fizzle  and 
fuzzle  and  fazzle  along,  instead  of  dying  gloriously. 
They  descend  from  Napoleon  the  Great  to  Napoleon 
the  Little,  from  George  Washington  to  zero. 
i  But  the  Smiths  and  the  Browns  and  the  Joneses 
have  a  strong-armed,  clear-headed,  clean-handed, 
323 


OLD  TIME   AND   YOUNG   TOM 

h'onesf-hearted  man  in  every  generation;  Haven't 
failed  to  produce  him  on  time  every  time  the  roll  has 
been  called  since  Adam  Jones  married  Eve  Smith 
and  they  sang  Welsh  cradle  songs  to  little  Abel. 
Cain  was  a  Uitlander;  he  was  a  remarkable  man,  of 
strong  passions,  who  had  no  patience  with  religious 
people,  and  see  what  became  of  him.  A  most  in- 
tolerant fellow.  The  Earth  is  fondest  of  the  chil- 
dren whom  she  nurses  at  her  own  breast;  the  chil- 
dren who  are  born  and  who  live  nearest  the  soil ;  and 
she  makes  them  strong,  and  teaches  them  the  secrets 
of  the  hidden  springs,  and  the  blessings  of  the  deep 
that  lieth  under;  the  mysteries  of  their  birthland; 
the  secret  of  patience,  and  the  talisman  of  power. 
Men  like  Garfield,  and  Lincoln,  and  Andrew  Jack- 
son, and  other  sons  of  average  men. 

Why,  the  patience  of  the  average  man  is  a  power 
in  itself.  Oh,  my  boy,  cultivate  the  grace  of  pa- 
tience. We  can  get  along  without  brilliant  women 
and  great  men.  They  don't  mix  with  the  brood,  of 
humanity  very  much.  They  must  have  single 
perches  for  themselves,  away  up  out  of  the  reach  of 
the  rest  of  us,  and  they  don't  do  the  great  big  world 
324 


THE   AVERAGE   MAN 

very  mucti  good,  after  all.  I  suppose  it's  just  as 
well  that  the  great  folk  do  keep  away  from  us. 
When  they  come  down  and  mingle  with  the  rest  of 
us,  we  are  very  apt  to  find  them  out.  And  then,  a 
long  farewell  to  all  their  greatness. 

We  don't  need  the  rushing  people  all  the  time. 
Oh,  now  and  then  one  or  two  may  be  very  good 
things,  but  the  fretful,  eager,  hurrying,  restless  world 
has  greater  need  of  patient  people.  The  patient  man 
or  woman  who  finds  strength  in  "quietness  and 
confidence" ;  who  can  be  patient  not  only  with  our 
sins  and  our  glaring  faults,  but  with  our  fads  and 
follies ;  who  can  be  quiet  as  the  gods  when  even  the 
softest  answer  would  have  a  sting;  when  the  gentlest 
touch  would  stir  up  contention;  who  can  wait  for 
storms  to  blow  over  and  for  wrongs  to  right  them- 
selves in  God's  own  time  and  way ;  who  can  endure 
slight  and  injury  until  the  wounded  heart  has  for- 
gotten the  hurt  that  made  the  scar.  Be  patient,  boy, 
be  patient.  And  you'll  wear  out  everything  and 
everybody  that  vexes  you. 

THE   END 


III!  Illl!  Hill  Hill  II 

A    000028560     1 


